Monthly Archives: February 2012


Finding MARS mutants in the human exome

Talks at the Sanford-Burnham Rare Disease Day Symposium highlight the “transformative potential of exome sequencing” for rare Mendelian diseases

Individually rare yet collectively common, ‘orphan’ or rare diseases affect nearly 30 million Americans every year. Despite the current explosion in genomic data and personalized medicine strategies, little is known about what causes these rare genetic disorders, how they progress or options for treatment. Marking Rare Disease Day, a one-day symposium at the Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, CA featured talks by several researchers studying disorders of glycosylation, especially in children. Several of these discussions highlighted how studying rare conditions can enhance the ways we detect, diagnose or research relatively more common diseases. Read more…

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Moving sequencing into the clinic takes more than just big data

Recent news articles discuss how NextBio scales technology to handle  genomics data

As genomic data makes its way from specialized laboratories into routine healthcare evaluations, it is perhaps appropriate that announcements of the latest sequencers were made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas rather than the  upcoming Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference.

New machines from Illumina and Life Technologies only strengthen the idea that 2012 is, in fact, the year of the $1000 genome. Led by a trickle of individual success stories, genome sequencing appears to be on the verge of altering the clinical landscape. While the FDA and regulatory bodies resolve the consumer issues of reimbursement and regulation crucial to patients, here at NextBio we tackle an intermediate problem: Making sense of the data. Read more…

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Predicting drug responses: Clinical Trials and Meta-analysis in NextBio

In part IV of the NextBio tutorials, we use the Clinical Trials and Meta-analysis apps to explore the effects of the drug tibolone

High through-put technology is churning out data faster than human beings can process and sift through this abundance of information. However, not all of the results obtained are included in the finished product of a study. A recent paper by Lisa Bero and her colleagues investigates the effect of omitted trial outcome data from the Food and Drug Administration. By examining studies included in the Cochrane reviews, the researchers found that approximately half of these clinical trials exclude data. Meta-analyses and systemic reviews based on partial data may overestimate the efficacy of the drug, a practice that can be harmful to patients. Bero and her colleagues found that 19 out of 41 trials included in their reanalysis showed decreased efficacy with the addition of unpublished data. Read more…

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