News

Vernalis Plc has received a milestone payment of $1.5 million from Novartis in connection with the start of a Phase 1 clinical trial of a compound to treat cancer. The payment stems from a 2004 research collaboration between Vernalis and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research under which Novartis agreed to fund research into a number of candidate inhibitors of a protein that plays an important role in the proliferation of cancer cells.

Scientists should be allowed to create hybrid embryos, combining some human and some animal material, in order to try and derive a new source of embryonic stem cells for research, according to the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

The European Medicines Agency has taken the first step towards implementing new European-wide procedures for testing medicines in children.

DSM Venturing BV, the venture capital arm of Royal DSM NV of the Netherlands, has made a €2 million equity investment in Jurilab Oy, in what Jurilab’s chief executive, Kari Paukkeri, describes as a “strategic alignment.”

German government institutions and private biotech companies are setting up a screening network that is intended to help medical researchers at universities translate their work into potential therapies.

Acambis Plc said its smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for active immunisation of persons determined to be at high risk of smallpox infection.

Antisoma Plc has reported positive results from a Phase 2 trial of its cancer drug, ASA404, which is intended to treat non-small-cell lung cancer. Data from the trial will be disclosed at the World Lung Cancer Conference in Soeul, Korea on 5 September 2007.

Marks & Clerk is to absorb the Lloyd Wise Group in a merger scheduled for completion by the end of 2007. Both firms are patent and trade mark attorneys based in London.

Vivalis, a French company that has developed a stem cell technology for the manufacture of vaccines, said it has licensed-in platform technology from North Carolina State University for producing undifferentiated avian cell cultures using avian primordial germ cells.

A proposed reform of US patent law, which is now before the US Congress, could have a significant impact on European life science companies doing business in the US as well as on efforts towards international patent harmonisation.