Background Back in 1989 in Belgrade Yugoslavia, Radoje Drmanac had an idea that would shape the next decade of genetic analysis, which was being able to sequence megabases of DNA information by a collection of 11-mers to 20-mers. Doing the mathematical calculations, this paper lays out what kind of DNA oligonucleotides would be needed to … Read more
With the beginning of the influential JP Morgan Healthcare investor conference this week in San Francisco, you can expect an avalanche of news from companies large and small regarding all things therapuetic and diagnostic. With an official count of about 9,000 attendees, there are many more in San Francisco who are there to have other … Read more
John Iafrede (Massachusetts General Hospital, MA) “There is a tidal wave of cell-free approaches; little performance testing; and the big question is who is going to pay for it.” This year’s Assocation for Molecular Pathology was held in Salt Lake City, Utah from November 15-18, 2017. (You can find the 2017 program and abstract here.) … Read more
With over 2000 clinical laboratory professionals in molecular diagnostics and pathology, plenty of technology and offerings on display. This year the Association for Molecular Pathology takes place in Salt Lake City Utah, and promises an abundance of new technology as well as the new accompanying science around diagnostic testing. Since this is a molecular pathology … Read more
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 20,000). Scientific publications were coming … Read more
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 existing clinical trials at clinicaltrials.gov … Read more
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, followed by tuberculosis, at 202 … Read more
One of the long-held goals for molecular testing of any sort (from testing the food supply for food-borne illness, to livestock health, to forensic testing, to testing for infectious disease, to screening for cancer) is to obtain inexpensive results without a lot of expensive equipment. The latest effort at ‘point-of-care’ testing has been to take … Read more
A while back I wrote about a San Diego company setting out to produce optical maps of genomes called Bionano Genomics. It was November 2012 when I saw them exhibit for the first time at the American Society for Human Genetics, held that year in San Francisco, and decided to write a few words about … Read more
Last year at Advances in Genome Technology and Biology, NanoString’s Joe Beechem presented their proof-of-concept work around a new single-molecule sequencing technology that had fulfilled a long-lived goal going back many years: sequencing by hybridization. (By the way, if you are interested here’s a 1994 paper by Lee Hood and Rade Drmanac describing this approach via … Read more
Genomic medicine will occur when research becomes translated into clinical and reduced to practice. Years ago Eric Green, the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (and one of the two organizers of the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference) would often talk about the need to make the knowledge of the human … Read more
Many times the fun of AGBT is the advances in genome technology If you have attended Advances in Genome Biology and Technology in the past, sometimes there is amazing technology presented in a plenary session. Who can forget Stephen Turner’s electrifying talk in 2009’s meeting, complete with fireworks on the beach? <https://www.genomeweb.com/blog/fireworks-beach-guess-theyre-officially-out-stealth-mode> (And if you … Read more