Welcome to my first blog on Scientist Solutions! It's great to have the blog feature on this forum and I am looking forward to read the perspectives of many other scientists here through blogs, in addition to the discussion in various categories.

I am a genomics researcher at UC Santa Barbara working with C. elegans. I am using an RNAi screen to find genes involved in the cell death pathway. But this is not what I plan to blog about most of the time (may be occasionally). I moderate drug discovery and molecular diagnostics categories on Scientist Solutions and those will be the focus of my blog.

In each blog, I plan to highlight one or two companies involved in drug discovery or/and diagnostics and talk about their technology, product pipeline, clinical trials and my opinion on their future outlook. This will be my attempt to learn about all the exciting science being done in both academic and non-academic settings, in the pursuit of preventing, diagnosing and treating various diseases. I hope you will also enjoy them and keep sending in your comments.

Molecular diagnostic firms performing or developing genetic tests have recieved a lot of attention recently. Here are links to some of my latest posts about  direct-to-consumer genetic testing (http://www.scientistsolutions.com/t5953-What+do+you+think+_+Personalized+genome+scans.html), and a  non-invasive prenatal diagnostic test for down syndrome (http://www.scientistsolutions.com/t6261-Sequenom+Down+syndrome+test+successful+in+study.html). There was also an intersting article recently on CNN introducing some companies in the genetic diagnostic space (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200806171525DOWJONESDJONLINE000558_FORTUNE5.htm).

I will start the company-specific discussion from my next blog. Let me know if  you have any particular preferences or suggestions.