In a bid to speed up the translation of medical ideas into new products, six technology transfer organisations from Europe and North America have formed an alliance to share best practice and collaborate on drug discovery and development.
Researchers from International Business Machines Corp (IBM) have developed a new antimicrobial hydrogel which, the company says, could be used to treat antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
AstraZeneca Plc has entered a research collaboration with Vanderbilt University of the US to identify allosteric modulators that could be used to treat psychosis and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.
Researchers at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium have joined forces with two French pharmaceutical companies to discover new compounds targeting the LRRK2 gene in Parkinson’s disease.
Two out of the three patients with chronic lymphoid leukaemia (CLL) who were treated with a novel immunotherapy in 2010 remain healthy and in full remission more than two years after treatment, according to University of Pennsylvania researchers.
The Roche Group is to coordinate a new project under the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) under which 1,500 induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines will be generated and characterised for use in the study of disease.
Leading institutions in the UK, including the Wellcome Trust, have announced plans to create a repository of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) in order to study how genetic variation and defects impact cell behaviour and disease.
A new effort to accelerate research into treatments for cancer is being made by researchers in the US and China who will meet in Beijing from 4 to 6 November to exchange information on modern molecular medicines as well as Chinese medicine.
In a move to strengthen its rare disease franchise, Shire Plc has entered into a research deal with Fondazione Telethon, an Italian biomedical charity, to investigate a number of lysosomal storage disorders and neurodegenerative diseases.
Two pioneers in cell biology, John Gurdon of the UK and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan, have been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in showing that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.