The proposed sale of Roche vitamins to Dutch firm DSM is to go
through second phase merger investigations by the European
Commission due to competition concerns in the feed enzymes market.
An information day to discuss European partnering and funding
opportunities for small businesses in the biohealth sector will
take place on 11 June in Loos, France.
Attendance at SupplySide East earlier this month was slightly up on
last year, according to organisers, and although there were few
product launches, the conference provided all the drama.
Thermo Electron Corp has presented a new range of instruments at
the ACHEMA meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, including what it says is
the world's first mass spectrometer to combine Ion Trap and Fourier
Transform Ion Cyclotron...
Cambridge Antibody Technology of the UK has signed up for a
non-exclusive licence to a technology, developed by Canada's
Chromos Molecular Systems, for the commercial manufacture of
biologics.
Celsis International of the UK, a specialist in diagnostic systems
to detect and measure microbial contamination for the
pharmaceutical, personal care and food industries, has signed up
Boots Manufacturing (BM) as a new customer.
Netherlands-based drugs, coatings and chemical maker Akzo Nobel has
announced a €500 million divestment program and suggested that it
is unlikely to remain a player in all three of these sectors in the
long term.
The Automation Partnership, a UK-based specialist in life science
automation systems, has launched a new low volume cell dispenser
for SelecT, the firm's automated cell culture system. The dispenser
was unveiled at the annual...
UK-based vaccine maker PowderJect is now said to be in the latter
stages of takeover negotiations, with the interested party widely
tipped to be the USA's Chiron, rumoured to be proferring a bid
valuing the company at around...
Dutch life sciences company DSM has broken ground on a new site in
Montreal, Canada, set to become a large-scale biopharmaceuticals
plant. Phase one - at a cost of €100m - due for completion by 2005.
In the US this week, supplier of botanical extracts for the
pharmaceutical industry Pharmachem Laboratories announced that it
has acquired 'the largest botanical extraction facility in North
America, producing extracts for the...
Three major players will try to recover costs from Pan
Pharmaceuticals after Australia's largest ever medical products
recall, reports IndustrySearch.com.
An EU funded project is building the critical mass of knowledge
required to ensure that Europe meets the Lisbon objective of
becoming the world's most competitive knowledge-based economy by
2010, reports Cordis.
The launch of newer technology products with a wide range of
applications and the facility to deliver proteins, peptides, and
large molecules is expected to rake in market revenues, according
to a new report from market analysts Frost...
Strasbourg, France-based Aventis has signed a research, option and
license agreement with Vivalis of the USA for the manufacture of
vaccine candidates using avian stem cell technology.
Danish excipient manufacturer Chr. Hansen reported a drop in sales
for the group of 8 per cent to DKK 2,191 million for the first six
months of the year ended 28 February 2003.
The European Commission has proposed new regulations allowing
Member States to grant aid for research and development (R&D)
to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), without having to
first apply for clearance from the Commission,...
Spotlight on the home of the celebrated pork pie in England, with
the annoucement this week that Melton Mowbray-based Bridgehead
Technologies and Pharmalicensing - two biopharmaceutical business
development companies - are to merge.
US manufacturer of vitamins, minerals, herbs and supplements
D&E Pharmaceuticals, has launched a contract manufacturing
services initiative, principally aimed at small to medium sized
nutraceutical suppliers.
US zuChem, a development-stage company that focuses on
commercialising manufacturing processes for glycochemicals, has
raised a considerable chunk of capital. Funds earmarked for
development of new sugar-based pharmaceutical intermediates.
BioInnovators, a USA-based consultancy serving the pharmaceutical
and biotech industries, has developed a new set of tools designed
to help pharmaceutical and dietary supplement companies understand
and improve cost and time efficiencies...
A new collaboration sees Hitachi Software Engineering (HSW)
acquiring the rights from German MWG-Biotech to produce DNA
microarrays for sale solely in Japan.
In a bid to improve efficiency and reduce costs UK in vitro
diagnostics company Axis-Shield is to shift the manufacture of
certain products from its site in Oslo, Norway to the company's
global headquarters in Dundee, Scotland.
BioProgress, a UK company specialising in the manufacture of
non-gelatin capsules, looks set to become only the second UK
biopharmaceutical company to brave the equity markets this year
with a transfer of its listing Nasdaq's...
ChemAxon, Hungarian company that provides software solutions for
biotechnology, has released its latest version of the Java database
engine enabling chemical communication across networks.
A new validation package for pharmaceutical applications has hit
the market. Provided by Markem corporation, the new package is
intended to assist companies, in performing validation of new
coding equipment and to ensure that a specific...
UK life sciences group Amersham has reported first-quarter 2003
sales of £381 million (€544m), flat on the same period of 2002 but
up 6 per cent if unfavourable currency impacts and discontinued
product sales were excluded. The results...
Architects of the new instruments for the Sixth Framework Programme
will be heartened by news that a German report on the country's
networks of competence has concluded that such arrangements
stimulate innovation and, in turn,...
US provider of virtual product development (VPD) technologies
MSC.Software has come up with a range of new software and services
packages targeted at the biomedical market and medical device
manufacturers.
Research into genomes of the natural world took a step forward this
week with the announcement from Diversa corporation that it is to
jointly collaborate with the US Department of Energy's Joint Genome
Institute (JGI) to discover...
Danish Novo Nordisk plans to break ground on a €10 million
expansion of its insulin manufacturing facility in Clayton, US. The
company has awarded the contract to BE&K Engineering and Suitt
Construction for the 19,000-square-foot...
Outsourcing drug discovery functions is a rapidly growing trend
that has led to a nearly $2 billion (€1.7bn) industry worldwide,
according to a new study released this week by Kalorama
Information, and contract services in the field...
Balchem reported a small rise in net sales, up 3 per cent overall
during the first quarter of 2003, but said it was pleased with
results in light of the continued difficult economic environment.
Net earnings at the New York-based...
In a bid to increase European competitity in the global research
arena the European Commission announced new measures destined to
encourage public and private players across Europe to upgrade their
research effort.
European Commission publishes table detailing progress it has made
in negotiating Protocols to the Europe Agreements on Conformity
Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (PECAs) with a
number of accession countries.
Danish biotech company Fluxome Sciences , based at the Technical
University of Denmark, has entered a cooperation agreement with the
US biotech company Bio-Technical Resources concerning development
of optimised fermentation processes,...
UK packaging giant Rexam, a major producer of pharmaceutical
closures and one of the world's top five consumer packaging groups,
has introduced a range of LDPE and foil laminate bags and drum
liners manufactured in a cGMP compliant...
Amersham Biosciences has launched a new range of ultrafiltration
cassettes, under the Kvick brand, which it claims "help to speed up
bioprocessing timelines by offering an easy way to separate,
concentrate and diafilter biological...
The Netherlands-based organisation for Applied Scientific Research
(TNO) has signed an agreement with GlaxoSmithKline to collaborate
in the development and use of TNO's in vitro models of the
human gastrointestinal (or "GI")...
Ireland is developing a sound research base in the areas of
biotechnology and information and communication technologies (ICT),
despite institutional and funding barriers, concludes a recent
report by the national policy and advisory...
The global economic downturn marked 2003 first quarter results for
Dutch based life science company DSM but strong autonomous volume
growth boosted figures to higher than 2002.
A UK-based company has become the first to offer a blister
packaging product for pharmaceuticals that meets the BS 8404
standard, which covers packs that are child-resistant but also
allow easy access for the elderly and others who...
Invensys APV, a supplier of process equipment to the pharmaceutical
industry, will demonstrate its new technologies at the upcoming
Achema 2003 exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany.
Prominent US genomics Robert L. Strausberg, who directs the
National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Cancer Genomics office, has been
named as vice president for research at The Institute for Genomic
Research (TIGR).
Engineers in the US are one step closer to mass-producing
therapeutic proteins needed by today's pharmaceutical industry.
Researchers claim to have achieved a major milestone in their
efforts to effectively produce human therapeutics...
The biotechnology industry in the state of British Columbia in
Canada could double the number of companies, attract large
revenue-generating biotechnology firms and create more than 5,000
new jobs within five years, says a strategic...
Strasbourg, France-based Aventis has announced its intention to
sell off part of its remaining stake in Rhodia, its loss-making
former specialty chemicals subsidiary. The move reduces its stake
in Rhodia to 15.3 per cent from 25.2...
A prominent US law professor from Stanford University has called
for an international treaty on sharing scientific and technological
information, to be based on the arrangements already agreed for
free trade under the World Trade...
As consolidation continues to mark the pharmaceutical industry,
more evidence to suggest that companies will increasingly turn to
biotechnology companies in order to gain the competitive edge comes
from a new study from Cutting Edge...
