Emerging Insights in Medical Research: Explorations with VarSeq

         September 28, 2023

Recent advancements in medical research have been pivotal in deepening our understanding of a variety of health conditions. The utilization of tools such as VarSeq in these studies allows for comprehensive genomic analyses, thereby ensuring more accurate diagnoses and facilitating the development of targeted treatments. This bloghighlights three recent publications that have utilized VarSeq to unravel the mysteries of different… Read more »

Using Compute Functions to Validate Variant Assessments

         September 26, 2023

Recently, a Golden Helix customer reached out to support for advice on how to validate the variant scoring between two different VarSeq users. Here we break down one possible solution as an opportunity to showcase the utility of both the Latest Sample Assessment function and an alternative way to leverage the Compute Fields function. To set up this validation project,… Read more »

Golden Helix Receives New NIH SBIR Grant  

         September 26, 2023

Pharmacogenomics Workflow: Identifying Biomarkers and Treatment Options  BOZEMAN, Mont. – Sep. 26, 2023 – Golden Helix, Inc. announced that it was awarded the NIH SBIR Grant 1R43HG013456-01 “Pharmacogenomics Workflow: Identifying Biomarkers and Treatment Options.”  Personalized medicine leveraging pharmacogenomics is gaining momentum to optimize drug choice, dosage, efficacy, and safety for individual patients. This grant allows Golden Helix to research pharmacogenetics… Read more »

Identifying Oncogenic Variants in VarSeq Webcast

         September 21, 2023

Traditionally genetic tests in cancer have focused on small gene panels that restrict their analysis to a small number of well-studied cancer genes. However, as sequencing costs have decreased, many clinical laboratories have embraced comprehensive genomic profiling tests that rely on whole exome and whole genome next-generation sequencing (NGS) workflows, which can detect millions of high-quality variants for a single… Read more »

Golden Helix is Celebrating 25 Years of Excellence

         September 19, 2023

Golden Helix Inc. celebrates 25 years as a leader in the genomics landscape. Built on solid Montanan values of work ethic and reliability, our journey began with Dr. Christophe Lambert’s vision in 1998. Our early triumphs in Genome-Wide Association Studies set the stage, but 2013 brought a transformative shift. Under Dr. Andreas Scherer’s leadership, we ventured into the clinical arena… Read more »

Accessing Report Templates and Simple Modifications

         September 18, 2023

Your variants of interest have been identified, the SVs annotated, and the CNVs classified. Once the manifest has been imported (and here is a great blog on the subject), the last step is to bring all of this information into a report template! In this blog, we will go over some simple report modifications and provide resources for more information… Read more »

Choosing Bin Sizes for the VarSeq CNV Binned Caller

         September 14, 2023

Detecting CNVs from whole genome data has a number of advantages but also unique challenges. Whole genomes offer a comprehensive and uniform picture of the entire genome, allowing a user to capture CNVs at a higher resolution than with data sequenced at a lesser scale. It also allows for the detection of structural variation over non-coding regions and for a… Read more »

Evaluation scripts in VSPipeline: We heard you like automation…

         September 12, 2023

…so we added some automation to your automation so you can automate while you automate! Automation has been a hot topic recently and for all the right reasons. As we (proudly) watch our customers increase their sample and data volume, we are constantly seeking to provide tools to reduce click rate and optimize throughput. Furthermore, with all of the new… Read more »

Evaluate the use of Evaluation Scripts in your ACMG Workflow!

         September 5, 2023

Recently, we have written a couple of blogs that were talking about the use of Evaluation Scripts in VSClinical workflows, in particular for the AMP workflow. Evaluation scripts were first introduced to VSClinical AMP in VarSeq 2.3.0 and VarSeq 2.4.0 welcomed evaluation scripts to the ACMG Workflow. Evaluation scripts are a nifty way to customize your workflow and say import… Read more »

Decoding DNA: Unraveling the Genetic Mysteries of Cancer Susceptibility

         August 31, 2023

In an era where genetics is reshaping our understanding of diseases, recent customer research publications offer invaluable insights, particularly in the realm of cancer. A study titled “Co-Occurrence of Germline Genomic Variants and Copy Number Variations in Hereditary Breast and Colorectal Cancer Patients” dives into a rare phenotype bridging hereditary colorectal and breast cancer syndromes, revealing the profound impact of… Read more »

VarSeq Assessment Catalogs for Beginners

         August 29, 2023

Variant interpretation is a critical aspect of any clinical NGS workflow. VarSeq assessment catalogs are a tool used to save variants and associated variant information for easy tracking and retrieval of completed variant interpretations. As variant interpretations stack up and classifications are saved, storing in assessment catalogs makes it easy to automatically fill in a previous interpretation if the variant… Read more »

Interpreting Fusions Variants in VCFs: A Handy Tool

         August 22, 2023

When interpreting fusions in their VCF format, it is not easy immediately grasp which side of the positions are adjacent in the resulting fusion. When interpreting and troubleshooting fusion variants, I usually find myself reaching for the VCF spec. If you, like me, are looking to speed up this process and gain a quick understanding of the fusions in your… Read more »

Webcast Recap: Best Practices for Validating a Next-Gen Sequencing Workflow

         August 17, 2023

With the widespread adoption of next-generation sequencing for clinical and research applications comes the need for guidance and recommended standards and best practices for achieving accuracy and efficacy for each assay pipeline. The support team at Golden Helix has gotten a lot of hands-on experience in assisting users to build their bioinformatics workflows for NGS assays. We recently shared our… Read more »

Versatile NGS Exports with VSClinical’s Custom Scripts

         August 10, 2023

Configuring a bioinformatic pipeline to reliably process genomic data is no small task. Doing so in an efficient, consistent way is an even grander challenge. Luckily, the VarSeq software suite provides a comprehensive toolbox for automation and integration. One of the first questions a new VarSeq user might ask is where processed data needs to end up. The versatility of… Read more »

Get More Out of Assessment Catalogs by Storing and Tracking Variant Artifacts

         August 8, 2023

Assessment catalogs are a way for VarSeq users to save variants and variant information for clinically relevant variants, so when you come across this variant again in another sample, all of the work to analyze and classify the variant is already done! But there is more than meets to the eye when it comes to using assessments in VarSeq. Being… Read more »

Using Text Manifests to Load in Sample Patient Information

         August 3, 2023

The ability to import patient-level information into VarSeq and VSClinical can not only save time while evaluating a sample but can be a critical step in automating project creation through VSPipeline. Here we will review how to construct a basic text manifest and how to apply that manifest to a project. Those fields can then be rendered into the final… Read more »

Advancing Precision Medicine: A Spotlight on Golden Helix’s VarSeq in Genomic Research and Clinical Applications

         August 1, 2023

The field of genomics and precision medicine is rapidly evolving, bringing forth innovative diagnostic and treatment approaches. The cutting-edge techniques and technologies discussed in the following papers provide insight into how whole-exome sequencing (WES), whole-genome sequencing (WGS), and deep computational analysis are reshaping healthcare. Our spotlight is on recent customer publications featuring the study of a unique heritable form of… Read more »

Mitelman Database of Chromosome Aberrations and Gene Fusions in Cancer

         July 25, 2023
Felix Mitelman

While the analysis of gene fusions is crucial for understanding the genetic basis of cancer, the process of interpreting these mutations can be challenging. One important component of fusion interpretation is the identification of relevant publications. To aid researchers in the search for publications related to specific gene fusions, Felix Mitelman, and colleagues have created the Mitelman Database of Chromosome… Read more »

Optimizing the Capture of Tier II Evidence in VSClinical AMP

         July 18, 2023

VarSeq 2.3.0 unleashed a whole new way to select, process, analyze, and report cancer variants through complete workflow automation, application of evaluation scripts, and enhanced annotation. Single nucleotide variants, copy number variants, structural variants, and genomic signatures could be added to a single patient evaluation, and Golden Helix CancerKB came packed with new report-ready interpretations to support them! Soon after,… Read more »

Importing External Assessment Catalogs for use in VSClinical ACMG and VSClinical AMP

         July 13, 2023

When doing clinical variant analysis, it is often essential to keep track of the variants that are encountered in each sample, their pathogenic or oncogenic classifications, which individual created or saved an interpretation, and when. For this purpose, VarSeq prompts VSClinical users to create default assessment catalogs in which to store variants and other events. However, we are aware that… Read more »