Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

The Centre for Applied Genomics (TCAG) at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has reeled in C$5.1 million (US$5 million) from the Ontario Genomics Institute to support its operations, OGI said today. TCAG provides a range of core services including gene and genome sequencing; microarrays and genotyping; cytogenomics and biobanking; and statistical and informational services. The two years of funding was awarded under the Genome Canada Science and Technology Innovation Centre Competition. TCAG was founded in 1998 and it provides research support to labs involved in a wide array of genomic disciplines including human health, agriculture, and plant and animal studies.

Direct-to-consumer genetics testing firm 23andMe has moved to a subscription-based pricing plan that now includes a one year contract and an additional charge of $5 per month. Along with the change in pricing, the company has done away with its separate Ancestry Edition and Health Edition products, which are now part of one service, called Complete Edition, that the firm offers. The base price for the testing service remains at $499 . The Ancestry and Health Edition products were launched a year ago by 23andMe. The changes took effect on Nov. 22. After the initial year expires, the contract will go to a month-to-month model, and customers will be able to cancel their contract at any time, a spokeswoman for Mountain View, Calif.-based 23andMe said. In an e-mail, she said the new monthly charge is based on the company's need to update its test and customers' test results as new genetic discoveries are made. The company's scientific team continually evaluates the latest scien...

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Well it so exiting to watch how man makes his future ... The future, always so clear..., had become like a black highway at night. We were in uncharted territory now, making up history as we went along. The future is not set, because we control what happens through the choices we make . The GATTACA era is not far off. 23andMe has dramatically slashed the price for its service and expanded its offerings to include a lineage tracing service through a partnership with Ancestry.com. In a statement today said that by cutting the price for its genotyping service from $999 to $399 it is “democratizing personal genetics and expanding the opportunity for more people to benefit from the genetic revolution.” The company said advances made to Illumina’s genotyping technology , specifically the introduction of the HumanHap550-Quad+ BeadChip , made the price cut possible. Illumina is the provider of genotyping tools for 23andMe’s services. 23andMe also said that beyond the new ancestry ser...

The last time i blogged on this issue Reading Between Lines and now California will allow two of the fourteen consumer genomics companies it slapped with cease and desist letters two months ago to again market their genotyping services in the state, the state’s Department of Public Health confirmed Thursday. The CDPH inspected both companies, and on Aug. 7 it granted a license to operate in the state to Navigenics and a week later it gave one to 23andMe. Both of these companies were among the group that CDPH in June said were operating outside of state regulations. “State law requires these laboratories to have a license, obtain a physician's order from the consumer and demonstrate how they validate the results of their tests,” “several” other of the companies that received the cease-and-desist notification have now applied for licenses in the state, but noted that the state is not currently disclosing further information about how it is investigating the other laboratories. N...