Summary: A new digital PCR instrument with two different sample throughput formats (24 and 96), many more partitions, and more colors to enable multiplexing The digital PCR market continues growing, as it finds its continued utility for absolute quantitation of nucleic acids for a multitude of applications, from rare virus […]
Five years and seven months ago (March 2012) the Next Generation Technologist blog had a set of four goals: An outlet to educate A place to build connections A forum to discuss A spot where the author can gain experience with web technology I can say that over this time […]
Executive “TL;DR” Summary: An interesting platform called SlipChip with potential point-of-care applications, for fast and potentially very inexpensive digital PCR Update: This work has been recently published (Oct 2017) in Science Translational Medicine. While at the recent Next Generation Diagnostics Summit (organized by the Cambridge Healthtech Institute and held in […]
What will you do with 1000-fold improvement in sensitivity over standard immunoassays? What about 100-fold improvement in sensitivity over Luminex ones? The 1990’s were an exciting times in science. The Human Genome Project had published their first five-year plan (and thought then the human genome had 100,000 genes instead of […]
“Amateurs focus on identifying their weakness and improving them. Professionals focus on their strengths and on finding people who are strong where they are weak.” Shane Parrish, Farnham Street Blog I am happy to announce today that I have joined Pillar Biosciences in Natick MA. (For those not familiar with […]
“Keep working no matter what happens If things are good, keep working. If things are bad, keep working.” Moby (American singer-songwriter) I am happy to say that my stint of being in-between employers has come to an end. (Details will be forthcoming.) I’d like to say now (in that period […]
A two-year stint at SeraCare comes to an end A little over two years ago I wrote a post called ‘One door opens, and another door closes’ about my moving from Life Technologies / Thermo Fisher Scientific over to a small in-vitro diagnostic controls and reference material company SeraCare Life Sciences. […]
What happens when commercial interests do not align? Over a decade ago in 2002 when Novartis announced it was moving its global headquarters to Boston MA, it was viewed at the time that the United State’s pharmaceutical market was the most robust and attractive, and it made sense for Novartis […]
There is a numbers problem, and a biomarker one as well. Annually the worldwide cancer drug market is on the order of $110 Billion, and individual immuno-oncology drugs cost the US healthcare system on the order of $100K to $150K per year. With such large financial incentives, there are currently over 900 […]
A ‘gold rush’ multi-billion dollar business, three targets, four cancer drugs, four antibody-based companion diagnostic tests, sixteen FDA approvals The human immune system is remarkable. When you think about the preponderance of death by infectious disease throughout history, the top two causes of death in 1900 was influenza and pneumonia, […]
We are living in a world of exponential technologies, and genomics is one of several where expectations are not set at something 30% better or cheaper or faster, but 300% within the space of a few years. The term ‘exponential’ is starting to gain traction in the general public; here […]
While at the CHI Molecular Tri-Conference a few weeks ago, you can learn first-hand what you may have heard in passing but due to constraints of time had not had the chance to look into more deeply. Biological Dynamics is one such company; a colleague at SeraCare told me briefly […]
