Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

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At the Bio-IT World Conference last week, Intel unveiled a new website, dubbed Optimized Code, that offers access to versions of several popular open-source bioinformatics analysis tools that the company has optimized to run on Intel Xeon processors, with the aim of generating results faster and more efficiently than standard iterations of these solutions. The first set of applications that the company has released specifically for genomic analysis include optimized versions of  the Broad Institute's Genome Analysis Toolkit ; Blast algorithms for nucleotide- and protein-based sequence searching; BWA-ALN , software for mapping low-divergent sequences to a reference genome; and MPI-HMMER , protein sequence analysis software. The company has also released optimized code for AMBER and NAMD, both of which are used for simulating the molecular dynamics of biomolecular systems. The Intel website provides performance numbers for each of the optimized codes as well as directions for h...

PerkinElmer announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement with Waters to offer solutions combing the firm's chromatography instruments and software. Under the agreement, PerkinElmer's liquid and gas chromatography portfolio will be standardized on Waters' Empower Software, which is used to manage multi-vendor chromatography data, simplifying data collection, processing, and reporting.  PerkinElmer said this standardization will enable its customers to simplify their workflows by unifying their chromatography data onto one platform. It also said that it anticipates the alliance with Waters will lead to new product launches in the environmental, industrial, and applied markets. Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Merck KGaA today announced that it will acquire Sigma-Aldrich for $17 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Merck will acquire all outstanding shares of Sigma-Aldrich for $140 per share, which would represent a 37 percent premium to Sigma-Aldrich's closing stock price of $102.37 on Sept. 19. The deal is anticipated to be immediately accretive to Merck's EPS pre and EBITDA margin, the companies said, and Merck anticipates achieving annual synergies of about €260 million ($334 million) within three years after the completion of the acquisition. In a statement, Merck KGaA Chairman Karl-Ludwig Kley called the deal a "quantum leap" for the company's life science business, whose contributions to the German firm's overall earnings would more than double with the addition of Sigma-Aldrich. "In one of the world's key industries two companies that fit perfectly together have found each other to present a much broader product offering to our global cus...

Roche said today that it will acquire Genia Technologies for $125 million in cash and up to $225 million in additional payments tied to milestones. Once the deal closes, Genia will be integrated into the Roche Sequencing Unit. Genia, based in Mountain View, Calif., has been developing a single-molecule sequencing-by-synthesis technology that uses nanopore-based electrical detection and employs a semiconductor integrated circuit. Last fall, Genia and its academic collaborators at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology published proof of concept for their NanoTag sequencing technology. According to Roche, Genia's technology "is expected to reduce the price of sequencing while increasing speed and sensitivity." Roche has also been working with Pacific Biosciences on developing a sequencing system and assays for clinical diagnostics using PacBio's single-molecule real-time sequencing technology. Last fall,...

Nuclea Biotechnologies and Thermo Fisher Scientific said today that they are collaborating on multiplexed mass spec assays for quantifying native insulin and its therapeutic analogs. Nuclea plans to use the assays to analyze patient samples as part of the company's diabetes research collaborations. The assays will be developed at Thermo Fisher's Biomarker Research Initiatives in Mass Spectrometry (BRIMS) Center and will be run using Thermo Fisher's MSIA immunoenrichment technology and its TSQ Vantage or Quantiva mass spec instruments. "We’ve already worked with the BRIMS Center to develop two other very important assays," Nuclea CEO Patrick Muraca said in a statement. "These assays have demonstrated the sensitivity, precision, and robustness needed for high-throughput detection of clinically relevant isoforms of target proteins." "The real-world application of multiplexed MS-based methods to type 2 diabetes presents an opportunity to advance ...

Qiagen has purchased the assets of Biobase, a Wolfenbüttel, Germany-based provider of curated biological databases, for an undisclosed sum. Qiagen said that Biobase will be renamed Qiagen Wolfenbüttel. Also, Michael Tysiak, BioBase's CEO, will join Qiagen as general manager of the newly purchased company. Founded in 2007, Biobase provides access to curated data assembled by subject matter experts and organized in an accessible and easy to search manner. Its databases support projects focused on functional and gene regulation analyses, variant annotation, pharmacogenetics-based analysis, and more. Among its repositories are the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD), which offers access to information on inherited disease mutations; GenomeTrac, which contains data on pathogenic variants; the PharmacoGenomic Mutation Database, which serves as a resource for locating variants that affect drug response; and the Transcription Factor Binding Sites database, which contains information o...