Shares in Swiss biotechnology company Serono have tumbled after the firm unexpectedly booked US$725 million to cover legal costs relating to an investigation into US sales of its Serostim AIDS drug. [ + ]

In a rare example of cross-pollination, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Sydney have pooled the IP from three advanced research projects on inflammation and cancer, and spun out a new biomedical company, Medical Therapies. [ + ]

Heraeus Noblelight has acquired the Spectral Technologies division of US company IST Corporation. IST Spectral Technologies is a manufacturer of light sources for analytical instrumentation. The product range mainly consists of deuterium and hollow cathode lamps. The products of IST Spectral Technologies are not only used in science and industry, but also, for example, in space research.

In one of the funnier scenes in the movie comedy Yellowbeard, John Cleese's character, Blind Pew, asserts he has acute hearing -- to the bemusement of others, who, amid the hubbub of street noise, hear it as "a cute earring". If people with normal hearing have trouble filtering a clear message from the noisy medium, the problem is magnified enormously for the hearing-impaired. [ + ]

The Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) has approved an application by Western Australian wheat breeding company Grain Biotech Australia to field-trial two genetically modified salt-tolerant wheat lines. [ + ]

The 25,000 doctors attending the world's largest gastroenterology meeting in Chicago next month will be briefed about a revolution in the detection and diagnosis of gastrointestinal diseases, engineered by Melbourne's Optiscan (ASX:OIL) and its giant Japanese partner Pentax. [ + ]

Select Vaccines' (ASX:SLT) hepatitis E diagnostics kits have gained CE Mark approval for sale in the European Union. The company will sell the kits from June this year through its licencee, Genelabs [ + ]

Adelaide biopharma GroPep has announced that a Japanese biopharmaceutical company has received regulatory approval in Japan to manufacture a biopharmaceutical product containing one of GroPep's products. [ + ]

Private Singapore natural products company MerLion Pharmaceuticals has sealed a three-year cooperative drug discovery and development collaboration with Japan's Sankyo. [ + ]

Wyeth's first-quarter earnings have risen 44 percent as sales of its vaccine against childhood infections more than doubled and sales of arthritis treatment Enbrel and other prescription drugs rose. [ + ]

Coley Pharmaceutical has filed with regulators to raise up to US$115 million in an initial public offering of common stock. [ + ]

Shares in two of the biotech sector's most troubled companies Chemeq (ASX:CMQ) and Metabolic Pharmaceuticals (ASX:MBP) rose today by 20 per cent and 15 per cent respectively, as the companies announced positive news. [ + ]

Melbourne stem cell therapeutics developer Mesoblast (ASX:MSB) has received ethics approval to begin a Phase I human trial of its adult stem cell therapy for angina. [ + ]

University of NSW epidemiologists have uncovered evidence for an unexpected upside to allergies -- people who suffer from asthma and hay fever are 50 per cent less likely to develop non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. [ + ]

Sydney peptide therapeutics developer Peptech (ASX:PTD) has reported "outstanding" results from a trial of an anti-TNF monoclonal antibody (mAb) resurrected from its tumour necrosis factor (TNF) research program of the late 1980s. [ + ]