Weekly Links 2 January 2015

“MUST READ”

• Why Are So Few Blockbuster Drugs Invented Today? - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks drugs nytimes

• They found that for every billion dollars spent on research and development since 1950, the number of new drugs approved has fallen by half roughly every nine years, meaning a total decline by a factor of 80. They called this Eroom’s Law, because it resembled an inversion of Moore’s Law (the observation, first made by the Intel co-founder Gorden E. Moore in 1965, that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles approximately about every two years).
• Learning How Little We Know About the Brain - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks brain nytimes

• Research on the brain is surging. The United States and the European Union have launched new programs to better understand the brain. Scientists are mapping parts of mouse, fly and human brains at different levels of magnification. Technology for recording brain activity has been improving at a revolutionary pace.

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES

• The Real Cost of Sequencing in 2014 | Bitesize Bio

tags: weeklylinks sequencing

• Total Cost 

The figures above get me to a 2014 cost of about $3500 for a 30x Human genome, and nearly all of that is still sequencing. However that ignores the actual costs of sample handling and downstream biological analysis.

• Lastly, although the $1000 genome is not available to most of us we should not lose sight of the fact that in 10 years we’ve come from a $300M genome to one that’s realistically available at around $3000. That’s a 100,000 fold drop!

HEALTH/MEDECINE

• Viruses as a Cure - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks viruses nytimes

• Taken together, findings suggest that some viruses may be working to keep us healthy. “They did a very good job of starting to crack that nut,” said Julie K. Pfeiffer, a virologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who was not involved in the new study.

David T. Pride, a microbiologist at the University of California, San Diego, said that the new study would spur other researchers to see if they can find similar results in humans.

COMPANIES

• GEN | Insight & Intelligence™: PCR Technologies Global Market: Forecast to 2020

tags: weeklylinks pcr market

• The global PCR market by technique is segmented into standard PCR, real-time quantitative PCR, reverse transcriptase PCR, digital PCR, assembly PCR, multiplex PCR, hot-start PCR, and others. Real-time quantitative PCR accounted for the largest revenue in 2013 and is poised to reach $5.65 billion by 2020. Further, digital PCR market segment is expected to grow at the highest double-digit CAGR of 12.2% during the forecast period. Among PCR products, reagents and consumables commanded the largest market in 2013 with services segment poised for highest growth rate.
• Data Companies Carve Out Niche In DNA Test Interpretation | Xconomy

tags: weeklylinks dna

• For more than a decade researchers have been unleashing a deluge of information about the role of genes in disease, based on automated sequencing of DNA. Genetic tests on individual patients are slowly becoming more common, more detailed, and less costly. 

But patients won’t benefit if their doctors don’t know what to make of those test results. They need interpreters, and that’s the role being staked out by small companies like San Francisco-based CollabRx (NASDAQ: CLRX) and Lexington, MA-based N-of-One, which help doctors wade through the flood of genetic information and choose the best treat
SOMETHING DIFFERENT

• ‘How Google Works,’ by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg - NYTimes.com

tags: weeklylinks

• “How Google Works” is a breezily written and occasionally insightful guidebook for running companies in an age of rapid technological change. It is not, as that exceedingly lame footnote shows, an especially revealing look into the influential juggernaut that has changed the way we learn about one another and the world.
• Dan Dennett: The illusion of consciousness | Talk Video | TED.com

tags: weeklylinks consciousness ted

• Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.
• How to Give a Killer Presentation - HBR

tags: weeklylinks presentation

• On the basis of this experience, I’m convinced that giving a good talk is highly coachable. In a matter of hours, a speaker’s content and delivery can be transformed from muddled to mesmerizing. And while my team’s experience has focused on TED’s 18-minutes-or-shorter format, the lessons we’ve learned are surely useful to other presenters—whether it’s a CEO doing an IPO road show, a brand manager unveiling a new product, or a start-up pitching to VCs.