A joint committee of the UK Parliament is supporting the creation and use of hybrid, human-animal embryos for research provided they are destroyed within 14 days after fertilisation and they are not implanted in a womb, according to the committee’s chairman, Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough.
Over the past 19 months, some 272 small enterprises have approached the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) to ask for assistance in carrying out their development and registration programmes, according to new figures from the agency.
Kinaxo Biotechnologies GmbH has received a grant of about €1 million from Germany’s Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to develop a new way of quantifying small molecule-protein interactions by combining mass spectrometry with Kinaxo’s chemical proteomics technology platform, KinaTor.
Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) has disclosed that it will make more than €400 million available for grants to the life sciences in 2008, representing an increase of €46 million or 13% from its budget for 2007.
The European Commission is asking scientists, industrialists and members of the public to help it draft a code of conduct for nanotechnology.
Hillary Clinton, the Democrat Senator from New York, has received an honorary doctorate of medicine from Göteborgs Universitet for her efforts to improve healthcare in the US. A ceremony is expected to take place in the United States in the autumn of 2007.
Pharming Group NV said that it has made “important progress” in the process of developing and obtaining registration for its recombinant human C1 inhibitor, Rhucin.
The European Medicines Agency has called for the withdrawal from the European market of the neuroleptic, veralipride, following reports of severe side effects.
Five medicinal products, including a generic version of olanzapine, have been recommended for licensing in Europe by the main scientific committee of the European Medicines Agency (EMEA). At the same time, a proposed treatment for Crohn’s disease from Elan Pharma, was turned back.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have described the structure of a human membrane protein that is understood to have a major influence on the development of asthma.