Genome Alberta's Official Newsletter

Genome Alberta Newsletter GeneSnips - November 3, 2008

 

Genome Alberta News

New Kids on the Block

Genome Alberta and the Bioinformatics Platform team are pleased to welcome two new people into the fold. Susanne Marie Cardwell is the Administrative Coordinator for BIP III and Chuka Okeke is the Project Manager for BIP III. Susanne has already started and Chuka will join us on November 3rd. Welcome Susanne and Chuka and we trust you'll find us a this an interesting and rewarding place to work. 

And while we’re on the subject there REALLY is a new kid on the block in Edmonton. Project Manager Ian Forsythe is pleased to announce the addition of 8 lb 8 oz Andrew to the Forsythe household earlier this month. Mother Jean and baby Andrew are doing well as are the rest of the family who claim they’re even getting some sleep.

Yet More New Faces

In the inevitable post-election shuffle there have been some changes to the federal positions that have affect our areas of interest. New to the Industry post is Tony Clement as Jim Prentice shuffles on over to Environment. Nunavut's former health minister, Leona Aglukkaq, takes over the federal Health Ministry. Rookie Minister Lisa Raitt becomes the Natural Resources Minister and Gerry Ritz stays in Agriculture. Rona Ambrose who used to have Western Economic Diversification in her bundle of duties goes to Labour and WED gets a bit of a restructuring with Lynne Yelich (MP from Saskatchewan) becoming Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification. We also have an interest in Fisheries and Ocean and a fairly experienced provincial minster from PEI, Gail Shea gets that job.

So start your Search Engines and take the time to learn a bit about the new appointees.

Science Cafe – Edmonton

Another Science Cafe at the Good Earth in Campus Towers, Edmonton is coming up on Tuesday, November 4th. Prion Scholar, Dr. David Westaway, and food safety policy expert, Dr. Ellen Goddard will be talking about how Prion research is leading to a better understanding of both brain diseases and food safety. Prions have been in the news a lot over the last few years as they  can create transmissible diseases like BSE in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans.

There is no charge for the event and it  gets underway at 6:30 with plenty of time at the end for a question and answer session. If you can’t attend look for more information on Genome Alberta’s Facebook application and during the talk you can follow along on Twitter by searching for #SciCafe.

CAVEman on YouTube

A snip here, an edit there, a voice-over here and the Good Morning America piece of the ‘4D Man’ has re-emerged on YouTube as a new item from VOA (Voice of America ). You can find the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkZPDvOi1K4

The Discovery Channel visited the CAVE a few weeks ago and the footage is currently being edited for broadcast. We’ll let you know when it will be aired on the Daily Planet with Jay Ingram. We took a few pictures the day the item was taped and you can find them at http://picasaweb.google.com/MikesGene/FourDimensionalModelingOfGeneticDiseasePatterns#

Science Opportunity Knocks for BC Researchers

Genome British Columbia has announced the results of the first Science Opportunities Fund competition. Nine teams of researchers located in Vancouver, the Okanagan and on Vancouver Island were successful in the competition with a total budget of 2.3 million dollars.

Approved projects range from understanding the genetics of sablefish, the biology of lavender, exploring the conifer genome to aid with future breeding and management of conifer trees, developing health assessment tools for marine mussels, the study of the wild bullfrog (an excellent indicator for environmental quality) to human health topics including cancer immunotherapy, the BC BioLibrary (a health platform) and support for building better bioinformatics which will generate more accurate data.

For more information on the fund and the successful projects visit http://genomebc.ca/genomics_programs/research_projects/SOF/default.htm

Manning Awards

The deadline for  Manning Awards Nomination is coming up on December 1^st.  The Manning Innovation Awards have gone to 207 individuals since 1982 and have totalled nearly $4 million dollars to date. The judging criteria includes intellectual achievement, uniqueness and originality, development, commerciality, and benefits to Canadians.  Winners have come from the scientific, technological, and social communities and are recognized for changing the way Canada competes.

For details, nomination form and to see past winners visit the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation at www.manningawards.ca

Canadian Bioinformatics Help Desk Newsletter

The latest edition is available at http://gchelpdesk.ualberta.ca/news/17oct08/cbhd_news_17oct08.htm

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GE³LS Digest

This is a sample from the GE³LS Digest put out on a regular basis by Genome Alberta’s GE³LS team. If you’d like to receive the full digest, email rhyde-lay@genomealberta.ca

Stem cells: Time to make good on promises – September 28, 2008
http://www.startribune.com/business/29828789.html
If a mathematical equation could demonstrate the commercial vitality of stem cells, it would probably look something like this: Hype/Reality=Anxiety. For all of the ooohs and ahhhs on display at last week's World Stem Cell Summit, there was also a prevailing sense among some investors and industry officials that all of this great technology must soon put up -- or shut up. "We have to hit milestones with the public in order to sustain our momentum," said Linda Powers, co-founder and managing director of Toucan Capital in Bethesda, Md., a venture capital firm that invests in stem-cell start-ups. "This is a relatively young discipline, but there is a [large] amount of hype and expectations. When will the public's expectations expire? "Despite tantalizing chatter about treatments and even cures of diseases such as Parkinson's, cancer and heart failure, the prospect of a stem-cell company actually selling real products and making real profits has never seemed so distant. Amid high development costs, lengthy approval times and skeptical investors, a sobering reality emerges. Commercialization is "excruciatingly slow," said Michael Haider, CEO of BioE Inc., a St. Paul company that extracts stem cells from blood in human umbilical cords. "I'm not aware of a successful stem-cell company. If you thought gene therapy was difficult, then [stem cells] are astronomically difficult."

 

Five Thousand Bucks for Your Genome: A new sequencing service could change the face of human genomics. – October 6, 2008
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21466/
Starting next spring, a complete human-genome sequence can be ordered for just $5,000, thanks to a new sequencing service announced by Complete Genomics, a start-up based in Mountain View, CA. The stunning price drop--sequencing currently costs approximately 20 times that amount--could completely change the way that human-genomics research is done and open up new possibilities in personalized medicine. Researchers say that a $5,000 genome would enable new studies to identify rare genetic variants linked to common diseases, and it could open up the sequencing market to diagnostic and pharmaceutical companies, making genome sequencing a routine part of clinical drug testing. Complete Genomics, which has received $46 million in venture funding to date and has largely stayed under the radar, plans to launch with a bang and anticipates the capacity to sequence 1,000 genomes in 2009 and 20,000 in 2010. That would represent a massive jump: with a price tag of $100,000 to $1 million over the past two years, only a handful of human genomes have been sequenced to date.

 

Icelandic biotech feels the pinch – October 14, 2008
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081015/full/455842a.html
It is not surprising to find an Icelandic business doing badly these days; the country has arguably been hit the worst of any in the current financial crisis. But the serious problems being felt at Iceland's deCode Genetics come more from US markets — from investment decisions made by its bankers, it says, and from a stock price that has plunged 54% since the beginning of September. Looked at one way, the past month has been a good one for the firm. It identified three new schizophrenia-associated mutations (H. Stefansson et al. Nature 455, 232–236; 2008). It filed an application with the US Food and Drug Administration to begin human tests of a new drug for Alzheimer's disease. And earlier this week it reported in Nature Genetics the discovery of genetic variants associated with a risk of the cancer basal-cell carcinoma (S. N. Stacey et al. Nature Genet. advance online publication doi:10.1038/ng.234; 2008).

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Genome Alberta in Pictures

The Genome Canada International Conference was held October 22-24 in Vancouver.  We’ve added some pictures to our Picasa site at http://picasaweb.google.com/MikesGene/GCIC08#

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