Germany's third-largest chemicals company Degussa has won the Frost
& Sullivan Product of the Year Award for its L-hydantoinase
enzymatic process for single-step production of L-amino acids, used
in the pharmaceutical, food...
Two US companies have forged an alliance to develop a polymer-based
technology that could be used to shield drugs from inactivating
processes in the body, extending their time in the circulation.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 15 New Molecular
Entities in the current year to 30 September, 2003, setting the
stage to outpace last year's registrations by nearly 20 per cent,
says a report from Cutting...
Welsh company Great Lakes Fine Chemicals has teamed up with Phoenix
Chemicals to develop new, more cost effective processes for the
production of pharmaceutical intermediates.
Australia's Gradipore has brought in external help to find a
solution to the company's manufacturing problems for its
polyacrylamide gels, used for electrophoretic separations in the
life sciences industry.
The amount of pharmaceutical R&D funding headed out-of-house to
research suppliers engaged in drug development work will grow
almost 15 per cent annually for the next five years, nearly double
the anticipated increase in overall...
A US start-up company specialising in biomaterials, 3DMatrix, has
developed a synthetic scaffold product that can be used to create
self-assembling, microscale environments to encourage the growth of
cells in culture.
A team of researchers in Sweden have developed a drug based on a
naturally-occurring protein that could represent a new class of
antibacterial to tackle the growing problem of antibiotic
resistance.
Molecular Probes of the Netherlands, a specialist in proteomics
tools, took the opportunity presented by the Lab Automation Europe
meeting towards the end of last month to launch a range of new kits
for protein, RNA and DNA analysis.
Radleys Discovery Technologies, a UK-based specialist in parallel
chemistry, has introduced a platform to speed up the purification
process after synthesis of multiple compounds.
The pharmaceutical industry is suffering from a raft of problems at
present, from a decline in R&D productivity through patent
expirations and the increasing reluctance of health care systems to
pay for prescription drugs.
A new process developed by RP Scherer promises to overcome the
stability problems that can occur when certain pharmaceutical
actives are formulated alongside fatty acids in softgel capsules.
De Novo Pharmaceuticals says it has refocused its business from
in-house drug discovery to commercialisation of its proprietary
in silico drug discovery platforms, halving its workforce in
the process.
Israeli generic pharmaceutical company Taro Pharmaceutical
Industries has been granted a US patent for a means of dosing
liquid medicines into a spoon without any spillages.
Many drugs cannot be administered orally since they cannot be taken
up in the gastrointestinal tract. All attempts to solve this
problem have thus far resulted in unacceptable risks of side
effects, mainly because the intestinal wall...
It is already well established that microwave energy can be used to
speed up the breakdown of protein molecules by enzymes, the first
stage in protein identification. Now, a collaboration between two
companies is looking to incorporate...
The innovation gap between the EU and the US will not be closed
before 2010 if the present rate of progress continues, according to
new figures contained in the Commission's European innovation
scoreboard for 2003.
German biopharmaceutical company Medigene has been granted a US
patent covering a specific manufacturing process for viruses suited
for the use in therapies and research.
A pilot study supported by the European Commission has concluded
that a lack of access to scientific equipment and technology, and
not salaries, is one of the main factors causing the 'brain drain'
of scientists, often from...
An oral drug developed to treat the common cold that was rejected
for approval by the US Food and Drug Administration last year could
find a new lease of life in an oral formulation, according to its
developer. If this is correct,...
Gaining ground in the billion dollar safety needles and syringes
market US development stage company Maxxon has linked up with Texan
drug delivery manufacturer Globe Medical Tech for a run on millions
of syringes.
InforSense, a leading provider of software solutions for
streamlining life science research informatics, has today launched
the Knowledge Discovery Environment 1,9.
The European Research Council Expert Group (ERCEG), set up under
the Danish presidency to investigate the creation of a new European
body for the support of basic research, has delivered a provisional
verdict in favour of the idea,...
Just ahead of the Lab Automation Europe and International Biotech
conferences in London this week, DrugResearcher.com spoke with
Kevin Hrusovsky, the chief executive of Caliper Technologies, to
get his take on the current state of...
ESA has developed a set of oxidative stability tools that could
allow compounds with unfavourable characteristics to be weeded out
at an early stage of development.
Merck & Co continued a run of bad luck in its product
development portfolio yesterday with the news that it had
terminated the development of a drug to treat diabetes.
Belgium's Devgen has been awarded a €1.9 million technology
development grant from the Flemish government to develop a
technology to identify the molecular target of human drugs.
Dow Chemical has teamed up with Germany's greenovation Biotech to
develop ways of manufacturing therapeutic proteins such as
monoclonal antibodies in plants.
CIMA is granted a US patent covering the use of effervescence to
improve the absorption of poorly-soluble drugs and target delivery
to specific areas of the GI tract.
The days when cigarettes were held up in advertising as healthy
products are long gone, but new research suggests there may be some
substance to this - at least for some disorders affecting the
brain.
Researchers in the US say they have achieved a critical objective
in an effort to create a living organism from DNA building-blocks.
The process used could be used to create bespoke cell-based
organisms to carry out a range of functions,...
A case study based on Pfizer's blockbuster antidepressant Zoloft
(sertraline HCl) reveals how early research on the different
crystal forms of a drug can avoid generic challenges later on.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday issued a new
document that encourages drug and biologic developers to conduct
pharmacogenomic tests during drug development and clarifies how the
agency will evaluate the resulting...
A new formulation technology developed by Rohm and Haas has the
potential to do away with the problem of prescription drug abuse
and make medicines safer in overdose. In-Pharmatechnologist.com
discussed this and other applications...
The healthcare division of UK-based speciality chemicals maker
Croda Chemicals Europe used the CPhI exhibition in Frankfurt this
week as a platform to launch two new excipients for drug delivery.
San-Diego based FeRx has received a slice of funding to support
research to evaluate the use of its MagneTarg drug delivery system
in the site-specific localisation of gemcitabine, a
chemotherapeutic agent already approved for the...
Solutia has launched an offensive on the outsourced peptide
synthesis market with the formation of a new business group in
Switzerland focusing on the sector.
An EU project has launched the first ever European virtual
microencapsulation institute, aimed at turning technologies in this
field into viable business products.
GSK has opened a new high-throughput chemistry facility at its
Harlow research centre in Essex, UK, that it hopes will allow it to
cut down its drug development time by around two years. This and
other automation projects at the company...
Medarex of the USA, a specialist in producing fully-human
antibodies, has entered into two new agreements aimed at improving
the properties of its drug candidates.
Ambion has developed technique that allows easier monitoring of
short RNA sequences in a variety of sample types and is 100-500
more sensitive than Northern blot analysis.
Ireland's Elan Corp has signed up another heavyweight partner -
Janssen - for its NanoCrystals technology, designed to improve the
solubility of drug compounds.
France's BioProtein Technologies, a biotechnology company
specialising in the production of therapeutic proteins in the milk
of transgenic rabbits, has extended its biomanufacturing services
to include recombinant vaccine production.
Inamed has signed up Bayer BP for its computer-controlled AKITA
inhaler, designed to improve respiratory treatment by tailoring the
delivery of inhaled drugs.
Affymetrix releases into the public domain what it says is the
first significant SNP database that includes genotype data and
allele frequencies across the entire human genome.
Epigenomics and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute are to press
ahead with the first phase of the Human Epigenome Project following
the successful completion of a pilot study funded by the European
Union.
BioFocus has entered into an agreement with Switzerland's Roche for
the design of a several custom kinase libraries for use in the
latter's drug discovery efforts.
