With October being recognized as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the team at Golden Helix thought it would be appropriate to pay tribute to some of the publications that over the years, have contributed to the many discoveries made in breast cancer diagnosis, prediction, underlying causes, and case management. We are very proud to be a part of cancer research and… Read more »
Golden Helix works to keep incorporating and updating great somatic annotation catalogs for our VSClinical users. We currently have the updated version of one of the largest cancer databases from the International Cancer Genome Consortium, or ICGC. Version 28 has been improved by integrating ClinVar and CIViC clinical annotations, and as always, increasing the number of mutations listed. The current… Read more »
VarSeq 2.2.0 was released today and this a stable release full of upgrades and polishes. Some of the newer features include the ability to store and include AMP Cancer assessment catalogs on VSWarehouse, quicker accessibility to common annotations plotted in GenomeBrowse, and the addition of all of our standard templates for the GRCh38 genome assembly. Many of the polishes were… Read more »
As our team returns from another successful ASHG conference, I would like to reflect on the great memories, connections, and future plans that were made at this meeting. First, I will start by thanking everyone involved with the superb planning and execution of the conference. We are thankful to have this opportunity to connect with our customers, partners, and friends… Read more »
Our team is getting ready to head to Houston, Texas for the American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting (ASHG) 2019. We are looking forward to spending the week discussing genetics with new and familiar faces! If you are planning on attending, please stop by our booth and say hello! You will find the Golden Helix team in booth 601…. Read more »
The common approaches to detecting copy number variants (CNVs) are chromosomal microarray and MLPA. However, both options increase analysis time, per sample costs, and are limited to the size of CNV events that can be detected. VarSeq’s CNV caller, on the other hand, allows users to detect CNVs from the coverage profile stored in the BAM file, which allows you… Read more »
Sentieon has become well known for the dramatic improvements it supplies in speed and accuracy for secondary analysis. Luckily, these improvements are not only available for DNAseq germline based variants but also for TNSeq somatic investigation. Sentieon has proven the capability by leading in awards such as the ICGC-TCGA DREAM Challenge for SNVs, Indel, and structural variants. This value not… Read more »
Before examining the clinical evidence associated with a specific mutation, a clinician must establish that the variant is likely to be a driver mutation which generates functional changes that enhance tumor cell proliferation. Our recent blog series “Following the AMP Guidelines with VSClinical” briefly mentioned how the oncogenicity scoring system in VSClinical could be used to automate and assist the… Read more »
From diagnosing, treating and preventing diseases in humans and animals, to preserving our global food supply, Golden Helix products are being used all over the world! In September, we were cited in many publications spanning a diverse range of species and topics. Below are brief recaps of a few of the studies where SNP & Variation Suite (SVS) and VarSeq… Read more »
Customers are always asking for ways to improve their experience with Sentieon, our partner’s secondary analysis tools that process genomics data with high computing efficiency, fast turnaround time, exceptional accuracy and 100% consistency. We have a few tips to get the most out of Sentieon. In this article I will be going over: Before you set up your environment you… Read more »
Gene Fusion Background Gene fusions are hybrid genes that result from translocations, interstitial deletions, or chromosomal inversions that can lead to constitutive gene activation and result in increased or abnormal protein production. Increased or abnormal protein production subsequently can play an important role in tumorigenesis and thus identifying and evaluating this type of biomarker is important in the cancer workspace…. Read more »
The Broad Institute team led by Dan MacArthur announced the release of gnomAD version 2.1 at last year’s ASHG conference. This new version boasted data from 125,748 exomes and 15,708 genomes, but the greater updates were the improved QC refinement and more discrete sub-population break downs. Although the majority of samples were counted in the previous 2.0.2 release, the additional… Read more »
We have covered a lot of ground in this Automating & Standardizing Your Workflows blog series. First, we saw how to perform secondary analysis with Sentieon to generate the necessary VCF and BAM files for tertiary analysis in Part I. The implementation of VSPipeline allowed for rapid import and project generation for a predefined cancer gene panel project template in… Read more »
VSClinical users can interpret and report genomic mutations in cancer following the AMP guidelines which we’re demonstrating in this “Following the AMP Guidelines with VSClinical” blog series. Part I introduced the hands-on analysis steps involved in creating a high-quality clinical report for targeted Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) assays. We reviewed sample and variant quality, including the depth of coverage over the target regions by the sequencing performed for each sample. Now, we are ready to… Read more »
In our last part of this series, we showed how to run a pre-built workflow template via VSPipeline to automatically import and filter sample variants to streamline the search for clinically relevant variants. Now, we can deep-dive into our filtered, pathogenic variants to fully understand and capture their final classification and interpretation. Filtered Germline Variants for ACMG Guidelines The VSPipeline… Read more »
VSPipeline: Automating your Tertiary Workflows The first part of this “Automating & Standardizing your NGS Workflow” blog series covered the secondary analysis steps of read alignment and variant calling with Sentieon. The next step is to transition into the tertiary analysis via utilization of our workflow automation tool, VSPipeline. VSPipeline operates as a command-line tool meant to simplify the deployment… Read more »
We are always excited to see how our software is used to support research and enable precision medicine. We believe that our customer’s success is ultimately our success! This summer was filled with many wonderful publications from across the globe and we are proud to have been a part of them. Here are just a few from each month: June… Read more »
In the world of genomics shaping precision medicine in oncology, the limiting factor is the time-to-sign-out of a fully interpreted molecular profile report. There are many components of the entire testing process that add to the turn-around time of each test. Many of these steps, such as sample prep, sequencing, and automated secondary analysis, are bounded and consistent in their time requirements. The hands-on… Read more »
With the increasing knowledge of mutations involved in cancer, it is imperative to have a tertiary analysis pipeline that provides users with the most up to date information on somatic mutations. VSClinical’s Cancer Add-On does just that and more; with this feature, users can investigate and report on SNVs, indels, CNVs, gene fusions, and considerations for wild type genes in… Read more »
Earlier this week, Inc. magazine ranked Golden Helix on the 2019 Inc. 5000 list with three-year revenue growth of 61%. The Inc. 5000 list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment—its independent small businesses. Microsoft, Dell, Domino’s Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first… Read more »
