PharmAust's (ASX:PAA) wholly owned subsidiary Mimotopes has signed a three-year contract with California-based Invitrogen to exclusively supply research-grade peptides to the global biotech group's customer base. [ + ]

Scientists at the Dairy Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) have discovered new methods to isolate and maintain large numbers of bovine embryonic stem cells. [ + ]

Adelaide-based GroPep (ASX:GRO) has increased its profit more than 80 per cent after tax to AUD$1.55 million in the half-year to December 31 2005, compared with $850,000 in the previous corresponding period. [ + ]

Every year, East Coast fever destroys more than a million cattle and costing some $200 million annually, this tick-borne disease rages across a dozen countries in eastern and central Africa. Now, an international team of scientists has taken the first major step toward a vaccine to prevent East Coast fever. Their work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how genomics can generate pivotal new vaccines.

With a new DNA test, tuberculosis infection can be revealed so quickly that a patient doesn't have time to infect others.

Changes in a widely used assay for parathyroid hormone (PTH) have made its use with the established guidelines for end stage renal disease clinical management both inappropriate and potentially harmful to patients. This research was published in the journal Seminars in Dialysis.

In what CEO Chris Roberts called "an absolutely fabulous result", bionic ear specialist Cochlear (ASX:COH) has posted record revenue, cochlear implant sales, and core earnings for the half year ended December 31, 2005. [ + ]

The NSW and Chinese governments have signed an agreement to help foster collaborative relationships between science and technology parks and commercial enterprises. [ + ]

Melbourne-based Acrux (ASX:ACR) has signed an agreement with the New York-based Population Council to commercialise a contraceptive spray containing Nestorone, a fourth-generation progestin contraceptive which cannot be taken orally. [ + ]

Danish biotech Genmab has acquired exclusive worldwide rights to angiogenesis targets identified by Adelaide-based Bionomics (ASX:BNO). [ + ]

In five years' time, Australian researchers aim to know what causes both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, with the help of a new national genetic database that has been set up to collect and study DNA from 3000 Australian families with diabetic children. [ + ]

Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon might have spared himself and his men the travails of their fruitless and ultimately fatal quest for the fountain of youth in the Caribbean in 1513 by staying at home in and quaffing the genuine article from oak barrels in his wine cellar, writes Graeme O'Neill. [ + ]

Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a panel of 22 biomarkers that together provide a more accurate screening for prostrate cancer than the current prostrate specific antigen, or PSA, test.

Inconsistencies among a growing number of genetic databases could lead to misdiagnoses of genetic disorders by health care providers, according to a study that appears in Cytogentic and Genome Research.

A review of Perth-based Phylogica's (ASX:PYC) Phylomer technology has been published in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology. [ + ]