Melbourne-based biotech company Sienna Cancer Diagnostics has announced the appointment of Dr John Chiplin to its board of directors. [ + ]

Why does evidence of alien life continue to elude Earth's scientists? Is it because such life never existed at all, or because it has already gone extinct? [ + ]

IRX Therapeutics and ImmunID have entered into a collaboration to predict patients' response to the IRX-2 immunotherapy candidate using the ImmunTraCkeR assay. [ + ]

Professor Ian Chubb has completed his appointment as Australia's seventh Chief Scientist after almost five years in the role. [ + ]

Imugene has announced the extension of its partnership with the Medical University of Vienna to discover and develop new mimotope-based immunotherapies against validated and new oncology targets. [ + ]

Western Australian researchers have discovered that the ability of sea turtles to respond to heat stress varies with their genes. [ + ]

Scientists have discovered that targeting a protein called Hhex could cure acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) in preclinical disease models and could also be a key target for new therapies for human leukaemia. [ + ]

A Swedish research team has developed a way to measure hundreds of proteins in a single blood sample, using these protein patterns to determine the severity of sepsis (blood poisoning) in individual patients.

A Phase 1 clinical trial has gone seriously awry, with one volunteer now dead and others with serious, possibly irreversible, neurological damage. [ + ]

Zoetis will evaluate the potential applications of Detach — a non-antibiotic, anti-infective product — for veterinary use in food production animals. Detach is a plant-based product that will help address concerns around the overuse of antibiotics in production animals. [ + ]

GEA's new in-house laboratory will enable the company's engineers to carry out extensive tests on the properties of powders and to design powder packaging systems based on scientifically obtained data to optimise production and reduce waste. [ + ]

It is with sadness we report the sudden death of Graeme O'Neill, aged 68, on Sunday December 20 last year. [ + ]

Scientists at Children's Medical Research Institute have developed a method to generate mouse embryos from stem cells without the need to use live mutant mice. [ + ]

bioMérieux has announced its acquisition of Applied Maths, a company that develops state-of-the-art software solutions for the biosciences — in particular for databasing, analysis and interpretation of complex biological data. [ + ]

US scientists have proposed a way to speed up the time it takes to conduct biological assays. Their solution, reminiscent of the science behind washing machines, could reduce wait times from hours to minutes. [ + ]