Traveling on a Light Budget; Learn to Map the Genome; Clique of the Titans

TIP TROVE | Traveling on a Light Budget Courtesy of NIH Traveling on a budget isn't much different for researchers than when they were students. For trips of a relatively short duration, going by train instead of plane offers benefits such as less time required to check in, and more room for paperwork while en route. Sharing a hotel room with a peer can result in significant savings. Although many now use the Web for travel arrangements, consider soliciting recommendations from a travel agent, who can be a resource for situations in which the costs you are analyzing don't look right. --Barry Koitz, chief of the Office of Financial Management/Travel, National Institutes of Health TRAINING @ | Learn to Map the Genome WHAT: Working with the Human Genome Sequence workshop WHERE: The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK WHY: Designed to enable participants to explore all the human genomic information freely available on the Internet ADVANTAGES: Participants will be provided time to work on their data with the trainers. WHEN: November 10- 12, 2003 DEADLINE: August 10, 2003 COST: £1,200 (industry applicants), £200 (academic applicants) URL: www.sanger.ac.uk/Info/workshops/opendoor CONTACT: Elayne Hodgson, +44 (0) 20 7611 8608, e.hodgson@wellcome.ac.uk In each issue The Scientist lists its pick of training opportunities. POLICY PLACE | Clique of the Titans Courtesy of Erica P. Johnson Two mammoth information technology companies, IBM and SAS, have joined to target the life science marketplace. A three-year agreement between the computer hardware behemoth and the massive software company includes a plan to provide contract services to pharmaceutical companies looking to analyze and personalize clinical data to get drugs to market quicker and cheaper. IBM will provide high-performance computing and storage capabilities with SAS providing data management tools to more efficiently organize, access, and query clinical data. The partnership is prompted by the fact that pharmaceutical companies are often burdened with a lack of automation in data collection from clinical trials. Workers enter information into databases in different formats, causing redundant entries that become prone to errors and regulatory pushback. As highlighted in a 2001 study by the Tufts Center for Drug Development, it costs more than $800 million and takes about 15 years to bring the average drug from submission to regulatory approval. "Companies are spending more and more on R&D and having less productivity," says Michael Svinte, vice president of worldwide marketing and business development for IBM Life Sciences. "You want to go faster or fail earlier." Every day that a drug's launch is pushed back to collect or approve data, a company loses $1 million to $1.5 million (US) in sales, according to Jim Kumpel, a healthcare analyst at Raymond James & Associates. He adds that investing in the IBM/SAS service could be a cross between dollars and sense. "You're talking about spending millions on systems rather than losing hundreds of millions in opportunity costs." IBM and SAS assert that their alliance will provide easier querying as well as flexibility for the expansion of data. Oracle and other IT companies have also linked up with pharmaceutical companies. Oracle has worked with AstraZeneca, Caprion, Genentech, and other big pharma companies to provide assistance handling their clinical data. "With many life scientists unable to predict the amount of data they will have in even a year's time, they need to create a database architecture that can start small with room to grow," says Vijay Pillai, industrial director of Oracle life sciences. --Hal Cohen function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

Traveling on a Light Budget; Learn to Map the Genome; Clique of the Titans

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of