The last day of February each year is designated as Rare Disease Day, a unique opportunity to recognize people who sometimes seem to be forgotten by the mainstream medical community. Once again PacBio is an official sponsor of the day, which will be marked with awareness-raising events in 80 countries around the world. It’s a beautiful way to remember the hundreds of millions of people affected by a rare disease, as well as the caretakers, researchers, and clinicians who work so hard to make their lives better. The thing about rare diseases is that, while each individual disease might affect…
The SOLVE-RD research program, a collaboration of 21 participant organizations in 10 nations, announced it has received a €15 million grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 initiative. SOLVE-RD aims to improve the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases, which in total affect millions of Europeans. The program is applying novel diagnostic tools to around 19,000 cases unsolved by prior short-read exome sequencing. Prominent among the planned “multi-omics” approach is long-read genome sequencing, which will reveal the large amount of potentially disease-causing genetic variation that is not accessible with short-read DNA sequencing. SOLVE-RD plans to apply long-read genome sequencing to 500…
Today we are celebrating Rare Disease Day with like-minded folks all over the world. The tribute kicked off in 2008 and has gathered so much momentum that people in more than 80 countries are expected to participate in 2016. Each disease is rare — affecting fewer than 1 in 1,500 people — but because there are so many of these diseases, together they affect millions of people globally. Here at PacBio, many of our team members have their own stories about dealing with rare disease, and we imagine the same is true of our blog readers. We’re so proud that…