Discovery That Modern Humans Aren’t Especially Unique, Genetically Speaking, May Lead to Improved Precision Medicine Diagnostics and Therapeutics

Of interest to clinical pathologists is the finding that sequencing the genomes of Humans and Neanderthals revealed a link between severity of COVID-19 infections and Neanderthal DNA Genetic scientists from the University of California Santa Cruz have learned that just 7%—or less—of our DNA is unique to the human species, with the remainder of our genomes coming from other archaic species, such as Neanderthal and Denisovan. Why should this matter to pathologists and clinical laboratories?...

Boston Globe Investigation Finds Many Boston Hospital CEOs Also Sit on Healthcare Company Boards

Cozy relationships between hospital chief executives and healthcare companies they do business with may raise ethical questions If hospital employees, including pathologists, wonder why their hospital uses a certain company’s products and services it may be because their Chief Executive Officer (CEO) sits on the Board of Directors of the same companies from which the hospital buys products and services. That’s the suggestion in a recent Boston Globe investigative report. In “Boston’s Hospital...

Fast Growth in Real and “Virtual” Biobanks May be Revenue Opportunity for Clinical Pathology Laboratories

Biobanking is now a $7.9 billion industry and demand for specimens is skyrocketing Biobanking is going big time! VisionGain estimates that biobanking is now a $7.9 billion industry. That’s a revenue number that should interest pathologists and clinical laboratory managers, since their organizations access large volumes of patient specimens every year. As one source of human specimens, both clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups have an opportunity to participate in biobanking...

Sequencing Developers’ Unprecedented Success Drives More Ambitious Goals For Genomics X Prize

New Genomic X PRIZE goals/subjects accelerate the drive toward personalized medicine Swift improvements to the accuracy, speed, and lower cost of rapid gene sequencing have caused the sponsors of the globally-known X PRIZE to revamp their offer of a $10 million award to a team that is first to achieve a defined milestone in whole human genome sequencing. Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will be interested to learn how, last month, the X PRIZE Foundation announced a number of major...
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