Inside Precision Medicine

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers say they have developed an inexpensive, portable, microchip-based test for diagnosing type 1 diabetes that they believe could improve patient care worldwide and help researchers better understand the disease. Described in a paper (“A plasmonic chip for biomarker discovery and diagnosis of type 1 diabetes”) published in Nature Medicine, the test employs nanotechnology to...

Transplant Genomics (TGI) now has an exclusive license to patent rights co-owned by The Scripps Research Institute and Northwestern University that could form the basis for clinical tests to improve management of organ transplant recipients. TGI is planning to use the technology to develop and commercialize tests that use genomic markers of transplant graft status as part of program...

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has come a long way during the past three decades to become one of the fundamental platforms in life sciences sector. Normally, this is a sufficiently long period for a technology to mature and the market to move to decline phase. However, the PCR industry is witnessing increasing excitement both in terms of innovation...

Genetic counseling services provider InformedDNA released today a white paper on genetic testing. Use of these diagnostic tests is growing rapidly, but inappropriate testing has negative consequences for individuals and the U.S. health care system, according to the company. The paper, titled Genetic Counseling: Connecting Patients to the Power of Genetics and authored by Rebecca Sutphen, M.D., Amber Trivedi, and Kelle Steenblock,...

Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, along with colleagues in the U.K. and Spain, report they discovered that key genetic variants may affect how cancer patients respond to radiation treatments. The research team found that variations in the TANC1 gene are associated with a greater risk for radiation-driven side effects in prostate cancer patients, which...

Sequence-based clinical diagnostics firm and deCODE genetics spinout NextCODE Health is partnering with the Academic Centre on Rare Diseases (ACoRD) at University College Dublin, allowing ACoRD to use NextCODE products in research aimed at learning more about the causes and better ways to diagnose autism and rare diseases. NextCODE's Clinical Sequence Analyzer™, which the firm says can identify causal mutations...

Illumina entered three separate deals with three European labs under which they will use Illumina's consumables and the HiSeq 2500 to develop and perform noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in their respective nations. French lab-testing service firm Biomnis will make NIPT available in France, Italian molecular genetics lab Genoma will perform NIPT services in Italy, and the Center for Human...

Consider this scenario: “In five or ten years, you will show up at your doctor’s office, not feeling well, with a thumb drive that contains all your important health-related information, including a copy of your entire genome. Your physician will run the disk through a sophisticated computer and, after studying the results, prescribe a treatment, maybe even a form of...

The task of finding and recruiting sufficiently large cohorts for studying genetic diseases has up to now been a needle in the haystack problem. This is rapidly changing as Sharon F. Terry, and her colleagues at Genetic Alliance are making possible aggregation of individual health information in ways and on a scale never seen before. In the process, they...

Recent developments reveal both the beginnings of consensus, and many more unresolved issues, when it comes to “incidental” or unexpected findings uncovered during genome or exome sequencing. The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) retreated in April from its controversial recommendation last year that labs should return incidental findings to the doctor ordering the sequencing for discussion with...