Discover the Latest Advances in Variant Classification and Interpretation Tools at Golden Helix’s Booth at ACMG 2023 We are excited to announce that Golden Helix will be attending the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) 2023 conference in March! We can’t wait to connect with leading healthcare professionals and researchers in the field of genetics at this premier… Read more »
Golden Helix provides extensive resources to help our users who are just getting started and address any issues they may encounter as they become more familiar with our software. Our resources are constantly updated and are tailored to the needs of our users. If you’re facing a problem, it’s likely that others have encountered it as well, and we’ve included… Read more »
The last blog in this series covered streamlining variant analysis for large genetic cohorts, namely case-control studies, on a single-project basis. The reality when dealing with big data is that you often do not handle a high volume project all at once. Therefore, we will follow up on the topic of cohort analysis by discussing Golden Helix’s solution for streamlining… Read more »
Thank you to those who attended our webcast on the user perspective of our automated AMP guidelines! Furthermore, let me express our appreciation for those particularly engaged users who posed some very thoughtful questions. While we weren’t able to answer all of them live, I hope to shed some light on some pertinent details of somatic analysis here. Let’s start… Read more »
Although best known for its auto-generation of custom reports, VarSeq comes with a slew of options for exporting your data. In this blog, we will review some of the lesser-known methods for exporting your data into usable formats. These four export options can all be found under the Export tab at the upper left corner of your VarSeq interface (Figure… Read more »
Golden Helix VSClinical provides a guided workflow interface for following the ACMG and AMP guidelines to evaluate variants and CNVs for NGS tests. The output of this work is most often a lab-specific clinical report. Since it was introduced, we have provided a powerful Word-based templating system to allow labs the ability to generate customized reports to include specific content… Read more »
Join the Golden Helix team at this year’s ESHG 2021 Virtual Conference! We will be presenting two different talks on our different product solutions and fielding any questions you might have. VSClinical: a comprehensive NGS clinical solution The first talk, VSClinical: a comprehensive NGS clinical solution, will be on Sun, 29 August, 14:00-15:00. This will be moderated by Golden Helix… Read more »
Next-gen sequencing (NGS) comprises many sophisticated steps that are often compressed into three major sections: library prep, sequencing, and data analysis. Obviously, the goal is to simplify each of these steps, but more often than not, there is a need for multiple tools to complete each one. Regarding the data analysis, Golden Helix seeks to provide simple yet comprehensive solutions… Read more »
Didn’t catch the webcast live? No worries! We cover ‘VSClinical: A Complete Clinical Workflow Solution’ Q&A’s in this blog post. The webcast, ‘VSClinical: A Complete Clinical Workflow Solution’ demonstrated how solutions provided by Golden Helix can be implemented to cover all requirements of a clinical workspace. Specifically, this webcast focused on a detailed workflow from a bioinformatician, geneticist, and lab… Read more »
Webcast Recap In the recent webcast “Exploring New Features and Clinical Reports in the ACMG Guideline Workflow”, Gabe and I took viewers through an evaluation with CNVs and SNVs according to the ACMG Guidelines where we generated and customized a clinical report. Along the way, we highlighted many new features that will soon be available in the upcoming VarSeq release…. Read more »
In a recent webcast, users were exposed to some new features upcoming in the next release of VarSeq. In this update, we will use an example de Novo CNV in a cardiomyopathy panel in VarSeq. There is a long list of new tools and polishes to the software but one major upgrade is the inclusion of the ACMG and ClinGen… Read more »
VSClinical is a feature to evaluate clinically relevant variants according to the ACMG or AMP guidelines. This feature can also be used to identify if a variant has been observed previously or evaluate a manually inserted variant. Take, for example, the scenario where a colleague is interested to see if you have seen any variants associated with Bechet syndrome, which… Read more »
It doesn’t take much effort to find articles discussing the value of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS). There is a consistent tone amongst authors that implementing NGS pipelines are critical for clinical efficiency in both hereditary disorders and somatic. However, NGS strategies do not come without their own challenges. Challenges include not only the detection and calling of high quality/probability variants from… Read more »
In VarSeq 2.2.1, you can set template annotation sources to automatically update to the latest version. Previously, VarSeq templates were frozen in time. Now, each new project created from a template would use the same source that was used when the template was created. When you save a template, you can have the sources automatically update to the latest version…. Read more »
VarSeq 2.2.1 was released on April 1st and features an upgraded gene annotation capability with new RefSeq genes tracks and an AMP workflow addition: the Drugs and Trials tab. The new RefSeq human genome genes tracks contain updated gene names and the recognition of any MANE (Matched Annotation from NCBI and EMBL-EBI) identified transcripts. VarSeq has been updated to be… Read more »
Thank you to everyone who joined me for yesterday’s webcast, I hope you all enjoyed it. If you missed the live event and are interested in knowing what we talked about, good news, you can watch the recorded version right here! There were so many great questions asked during our Live Q&A that I was unable to answer all of… Read more »
Although VarSeq is intentionally designed to be a clinical NGS pipeline tool able to run a handful or even single samples through, we have many users who run large cohort style studies with the tool as well. One common use is to compare case/control data to isolate variants shared among affected individuals and exclude those in unaffected. One incredibly powerful… Read more »
Golden Helix is in a unique position to provide a secure on-premise analysis solution. This capability is based on two enablers. First, we build our software solutions from scratch and from the ground-up with the assumption that it should run on any operating system and potentially behind firewalls or even without internet access. Second, we provide these solutions on a licensing model based on training and supporting users, not… Read more »
Clinical labs offer a unique and sophisticated product that is performed repeatedly with high standards of quality. VarSeq was developed to provide labs with the customization required for clinical genetic tests in a repeatable workflow. On top of this, VSClinical offers additional parameters and choices that can be made when designing the test workflow. In this blog series, we will… Read more »
As clinical genetic tests have been adopted as a critical enabler of precision medicine, the number of tests offered by clinical labs and the volume of tested patients has grown by orders of magnitude in the past five years. The Gene Testing Registry, managed by the NIH, documented a rise from 13,000 to 60,000 tests offered in the US market… Read more »
