Research & University News

Researchers funded by the UK Medical Research Council have reported that the human body has a system of intracellular immunity by which antibodies can fight viruses from within infected cells.

The UK government has launched two new life science clusters that will bring experts from industry, the academic community and the National Health Service together to do early-stage drug development.

The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) and Roche Molecular Systems Inc have entered into a three-year collaboration to find out if they can predict a woman’s risk for developing cervical cancer.

The US Food and Drug Administration has awarded $2.9 million to support six research projects aimed at helping with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of tuberculosis. The awards were issued under the agency’s Critical Path Initiative.

Novartis International AG said it is stopping work on albinterferon alfa-2b for hepatitis C and Mycograb (efungumab) for fungal infections in order to focus on more promising products. It will take a charge of $590 million in the third quarter.

A study of life-science start-ups in Britain over the five years to 2009 shows that investment per start-up in some regions is too small to ensure that the companies can be sustainable.

Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK and Illumina Inc of the US have mapped the genome of the Tasmanian devil, a mammal that is confronted with extinction because of infection with a transmissible facial cancer.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd has strengthened its ties with Oxford University in the UK in order to explore new applications for its sequencing technology to the field of protein sensing.

Investigators working for a Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute-funded study have found that patients with a particular DNA variant may experience a build-up of glutamate in nerve cell junctions of the brain, a process that is thought to lead to migraine attacks.

Cancer Research Technology of the UK has signed an agreement with Bayer Schering Pharma AG to evaluate new leptin antagonist peptides as potential treatments for gynaecological diseases, including cancer.