Golden Helix Blog

Upcoming in Assessment Catalogs: Easy Search and Retrieval of Classified Variants in VarSeq 3.0

Aug 25, 2025

Variant interpretation is an iterative process, and over time, labs can accumulate a large collection of reviewed variants. Managing these interpretations efficiently is critical for saving time, reducing redundancy, and maintaining consistency across projects. VarSeq assessment catalogs serve as a central repository for storing variant classifications, interpretations, and supporting details.…

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The Golden Helix Team is Growing: Introducing Our Newest Team Members

Aug 21, 2025

Golden Helix is excited to welcome a group of talented individuals who bring a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and professional skills to the table. Each of our new team members adds their unique expertise and perspective, strengthening our ability to serve the genomics and precision medicine community. With that,…

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Defining HLA Diplotypes for Pharmacogenomics

Aug 14, 2025

In the dynamic field of pharmacogenomics (PGx), the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system stands out as a critical factor in personalizing drug therapies, particularly in avoiding severe adverse reactions. However, as highlighted in a comprehensive review on the HLA system’s genetics and clinical testing, these genes are notoriously challenging to…

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Improving the Quality of CNV Analysis in VarSeq

Aug 13, 2025

High-quality copy number variant (CNV) analysis begins with a well-designed assay and optimized sequencing workflow. Foundational quality measures deployed in VarSeq include building an appropriate reference set for coverage normalization, ensuring sufficient sequencing depth, and maintaining consistency in both the sequencing platform and library preparation methods. These steps help ensure…

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5 Things I Wish I Knew When Getting Started With VarSeq

Aug 7, 2025

As a new member of Golden Helix’s Field Application Services team, I’ve recently been diving into the capabilities of VarSeq and our broader software suite – an experience every new VarSeq user goes through. If I could schedule a training call with my former self, there are some key points…

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Take Control Over Your Variant Assessment Catalogs

Aug 5, 2025

Over the past several months, we’ve highlighted the powerful new capabilities introduced with VarSeq Warehouse 3.0. Today, I’d like to focus on a familiar feature that’s been thoughtfully enhanced, assessment catalog record management. This update significantly improves data quality, role-based collaboration, and regulatory compliance. Variant assessment catalogs have always been…

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Precision in Practice: VarSeq and VSClinical in Recent Peer-Reviewed Studies | July 2025

Jul 31, 2025

As next-generation sequencing (NGS) becomes more embedded in clinical diagnostics and research workflows, the ability to confidently interpret and report on genomic findings is more critical than ever. In July 2025, Golden Helix’s software suite continued to play a central role in variant annotation and classification, with publications spanning diverse…

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Running PacBio HiFi Workflows in VSWarehouse 3

Jul 30, 2025

Managing long read analysis used to mean wrestling with Cromwell servers, custom compute nodes, and a tangle of WDL files. VSWarehouse 3 removes that burden. Drop your PacBio output into a watched folder, and our platform does the rest: spinning up compute, tracking every task, and handing you fully annotated results…

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Automating Pharmacogenomics Workflows with VSWarehouse 3: From Variants to Clinical Reports

Jul 24, 2025

In our recent webcast, we explored how VSWarehouse 3 streamlines and automates pharmacogenomics workflows, transforming raw NGS data into actionable clinical reports. This blog post recaps the webcast, breaking down each component of the standard pharmacogenomics workflows to demonstrate how laboratories can achieve end-to-end automation in pharmacogenomic (PGx) testing. Golden…

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Leveraging VarSeq for NGS Quality Control

Jul 24, 2025

A crucial step in any NGS analysis is quality control, which is essential for confirming the validity of potentially clinically relevant findings before proceeding with any subsequent variant interpretation or reporting. While Golden Helix does not directly provide NGS validation services, our VarSeq software provides robust analysis tools that can…

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Implementing Data Freedom Practices in Your Genomics Workflows

Jul 17, 2025

In the world of genomics, data ownership and portability are fundamental principles that every researcher and clinician should embrace. With the increasing complexity of genomic datasets and the critical importance of long-term data accessibility, having the ability to export your data in multiple formats is not just convenient, it’s essential.…

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Enhancing Solid Tumor Analysis with Golden Helix CancerKB

Jul 15, 2025

This year, the Golden Helix CancerKB curation team has been hard at work expanding and refining the content that supports somatic analysis workflows, including cancer variant interpretation and clinical reporting. In addition to staying current with the latest FDA-approved therapies and NCCN Guideline-recommended treatments, the team has taken on a…

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Enhanced Transcript Annotation: HGVS Repeat Notation Support in VarSeq

Jul 10, 2025

At Golden Helix, we’ve supported the HGVS variant nomenclature standard since the very first release of VarSeq. The HGVS standard provides a consistent and precise language for describing sequence variants in the context of gene transcripts and is a critical part of clinical genomics workflows. As with all living standards,…

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The Breakend Catalog Format for VarSeq 3

Jul 8, 2025

New to VarSeq 3 is support for breakend catalogs. Breakends represent the junction points of structural variants, which include complex genomic rearrangements like translocations, inversions, and large deletions that play crucial roles in cancer genomics and rare disease analysis. These catalogs are unique as they must save two genomic positions…

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June 2025 Customer Publications: Variant Classifications for Cancer & HHT

Jun 27, 2025

This month, our team at Golden Helix is proud to highlight a series of standout customer publications demonstrating the real-world impact of next-generation sequencing and variant analysis. Featured articles from June 2025 showcase the power of the VarSeq platform in supporting high-quality research across hereditary and somatic disease. From integrating…

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Deploying VSWarehouse 3 With Ease

Jun 26, 2025

Managing genomic workflows at scale has always required a bit of IT expertise. The reality is, Next Generation Sequencing data is quite large and requires substantial compute resources to process. Clinical labs must carefully plan how to scale their IT resources to match their genomic testing workloads. Some labs prefer…

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Visualizing Base Modifications in Long-Read Alignment Files

Jun 19, 2025

We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature in GenomeBrowse that enhances our support for visualizing long-read sequencing data: the ability to color reads by base modifications, such as DNA methylation, directly from BAM and CRAM alignment files. Long-read sequencing technologies like those from PacBio and Oxford Nanopore have unlocked…

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The CoLoRS Database: Enhancing Your Long-Read Sequencing Analysis

Jun 17, 2025

Here at Golden Helix, we continue to develop top-quality bioinformatic software to support high-throughput clinical next-gen sequencing pipelines, including long-read whole-genome-sequencing (WGS) workflows. WGS long-read technologies like PacBio HiFi and Oxford Nanopore offer improved variant calling for SNVs, Indels, structural variants, tandem repeats and repeat expansions, and epigenetic modifications. Each…

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Evaluation Scripts for Importing Structural Variant Calls

Jun 10, 2025

As comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) becomes the standard in cancer variant analysis, the scale and complexity of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data continue to grow. It is now commonplace to report on small variants, larger amplifications and deletions, various complex structural variants (fusions or breakends) as well as genomic signatures like…

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Creating Automatable Workflow Templates with VarSeq

Jun 10, 2025

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis often involves multiple steps from variant annotation, filtering, interpretation, visualization, and report generation. Repeating these steps manually for each new project can be error-prone and inefficient. In clinical bioinformatics and regulated environments, we recognize that consistency is critical. That’s why VarSeq offers robust support for…

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