Biotech License

Expert Commentary | The Tesla Bio Workbench was recently announced by Nvidia, maker of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for the computing industry and lately for high-performance computing (HPC) as well. Nvidia processors were originally designed for graphics processing, but have been adapted to general-purpose computing through the use of a computing architecture known as CUDA. Bio Workbench is simply a website that brings together all of the algorithms for the life sciences for the convenience of the researcher.

Bio-IT World | Deepak Singh, business development manager at Amazon Web Services, has been named as the third and final keynote speaker at the 2010 Bio-IT World Expo, where he will be presenting on cloud computing for life sciences.

Houston Chronicle | IBM has given Rice University one of its first POWER7 supercomputers on the condition that Rice open up access to the computer to all the Texas Medical Center.

Bio-IT World | The Bioinformatics Organization (bioinformatics.org) has announced the names of the six nominees for the 2010 Benjamin Franklin Award. The winner will be presented with the award and deliver a lecture at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, on Wednesday, April 21.

New York Times | Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have used a new technique to to disrupt a gene in T cells. The results are in clincal trials now and if the technique worked, the altered T cells could render the patient immune to AIDS.

SNPedia | The creators of the excellent SNPedia, Greg Lennon and Michael Cariaso, have selected their favorite ten SNPs from the wiki that totals nearly 10,000 polymorphisms, based on their selective evaluation of medical importance, statistical rigor, and general interest.

Financial Times | The 21st century was destined to be the century of biology, but bioscience has not delivered results as quickly as some had hoped.

Computing | AstraZeneca is reportedly on track to save $150m in reduced IT costs and increased efficiency thanks to better data management for clinical trials.

Silicon Valley Business Journal | After Linda Avey's departure in September and layoffs in October, 23andMe has completed a $27.8 million second round of funding.

ABC News | Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have mapped lung and skin cancer in what is being called a breakthrough that could revolutionize cancer care. The two studies were published today in Nature.