IDBS E-WorkBook Suite Validated for FDA’s 21 CFR Part 11
E-WorkBook Suite, an electronic lab notebook offered by IDBS, has been independently validated by the Sociedad de Validación de Sistemas (SVS) against the FDA’s 21 CFR Part 11 and Good Laboratory Practice guidelines.
The company’s standard E-WorkBook has been validated since 2006, but now the full E-WorkBook Suite, including BioBook and ChemBook, has been successfully validated.
SVS, based in Spain, provides validation and compliance services to the pharmaceutical industry.
Sigma-Aldrich Adds More than 56,000 Structures to PubChem
Sigma-Aldrich said this week that it has added more than 56,000 of chemical structures, representing specialty chemicals from its catalog, to the National Institutes of Health's PubChem database, which is freely available here.
In conjunction with this, the company has included PubChem IDs with product listings on its website, providing customers a link between a molecule on the site and the corresponding PubChem data.
This addition represents the second contribution by Sigma-Aldrich to PubChem this year. It added structures representing compounds in the Library of Pharmacologically Active Compounds, a collection of approved drugs and bioactive small molecules, in April.
U Alabama Installs IBM’s Blue Gene to Triple Computing Power
The University of Alabama at Birmingham has acquired an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer for biological research, tripling its computing power. The new supercomputer will allow the university to enhance its capabilities in computational biology and molecular simulations.
The university will use the 5.6-teraflop Blue Gene/L system to study, simulate, and find ways to impede or halt biological activity in human tissue that leads to tumors and other life-threatening diseases.
Stanford to Offer AMIA’s First Bioinformatics Training Program
The American Medical Informatics Association said this week that it is partnering with Stanford University to offer bioinformatics training courses under its “10x10” program, an initiative to educate 10,000 healthcare professionals on medical informatics by 2010.
The Stanford program will be the first bioinformatics offering under the effort. It will introduce basic computational issues and methods used in molecular biology, including an overview of biological data sources available on the web. Topics will include basic algorithms for alignment of biological sequences and structures in addition to more sophisticated topics like advanced representational and algorithmic issues in structure and sequence computation.
Bioengineering and genetics professor Russ Altman will serve as the director of the Stanford University 10x10 offering.
AMIA said that Altman and Atul Butte, assistant professor of medical informatics and pediatrics at Stanford, will be panelists for a webinar called "Introduction to Translational Bioinformatics" scheduled to take place on Sept. 6.
A complete description and registration is available here.
BioSolveIT to Market Molecular Networks Products in North America
BioSolveIT and Molecular Networks said this week that they have signed an agreement in which BioSolveIT, known for its docking tool FlexX, will also market Molecular Networks' products such as the 3D structure generation tool CORINA in North America.
BioSolveIT's US sales representative, Marguerita Lim-Wilby, will manage all product and license inquiries for both companies.
Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics Installs Nexsan Storage System
Storage provider Nexsan Technologies said this week that the Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics has installed its SATABeast disk-based storage arrays.
The Nexsan systems will store large quantities of scientific research data on the genetic causes of diabetes, obesity, and other diseases.
Nexsan said that the WTCHG's data yield has soared from 20 gigabytes per day several years ago to a daily level of 200-300 gigabytes.
The WTCHG currently runs a 120-node Linux cluster and 25 core servers.
The center has begun a new research collaboration that required researchers to access direct attached storage online, Nexsan said.
The Nexsan arrays are directly attached to a server that feeds into a fiber channel switch for distribution to other servers. Overall data capacity has been increased to 42 terabytes. The new research collaboration is consuming 30 terabytes, Nexsan said.