One of the most important factors in determining the ultimate success of a next generation sequencing project is the initial project design.  There are many things to consider when designing a project based on project goals, sample type, budget, timeframe etc.  At EdgeBio we spend a great deal of time up front with our clients discussing and planning the best approach to meet their specific needs.  For many clients this will be their first foray into the world of next generation sequencing and as the range of options continues to expand at a rapid pace it can be a daunting task in figuring

This is a guest post contributed by Dr. Brad Chapman from the Harvard School of Public Health. Original post can be found here.

It’s been a while since I have blogged on Ion Torrent data.  There are several reasons for this.

First and foremost is that my head has been buried in The Archon Genomics XPrize Validation Protocol in which we were contracted to execute staring at the end of last year.  The AGXP is an ambitious, incentivized prize competition that will award $10 million to the first team to rapidly, accurately, and economically sequence 100 whole human genomes to a level of accuracy never before achieved.  The VP provides an opportunity to test and score current WGS technologies, assist the scientific community in establishing the reference genome(s) for this Competition and the means for analyzing the results of the Competition.

Second, it was with great anticipation and excitement that we received our Certificate of Compliance recently from the US Dept. of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This means we have been deemed a CLIA lab and can begin to offer our Clinical Exome test under CLIA guidelines.  No small feat.

But, here I am, again, knocking the dust off the blogging boots, and wading into another data set Ion Torrent has publically released. 

The Life Technologie's Ion Torrnet  Bus stoped at EdgeBio in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Here they talked with President and CEO Dean Gaalaas about how EdgeBio has successfully been using the Ion PGM Sequencer in their service lab for over a year now. The Ion Torrent PGM Sequencer's speed has enabled EdgeBio to dramatically increase sequencing turnaround times, from weeks to days.

Contributed by Dr. Samuel Levy : Director of Genomic Sciences - Scripps Translational Science Institute and Scripps Genomic Medicine, Professor of Molecular and Experimental Medicine - The Scripps Research Institute

AmpliSeq Cancer Panel applied to a tumor and blood sample pair for the detection of common somatic mutations

We have a clinical research protocol that aims to provide tumor mutation data to oncologists as part of a patient’s cancer care within the Scripps network and we were trying to figure out ways of providing these data in a time sensitive manner to patients and their physicians.  Whilst both exome and whole genome sequencing are good options, we wanted to maximize the use of any large amount of data we generate in an oncologist’s care approach. Consequently we decided that these options were data overkill for what a treating oncologist typically employs.