US regulators are moving to get drug safety warnings to patients and physicians earlier, which should limit prescribing and cut the number of dangerous side effects, a top US Food and Drug Administration official has told the United States congress. [ + ]

Mastitis, or bacterial infections of the udder, is a AUD$140 million a year problem for Australia's dairy industry. It can cost farmers up to $150 an animal to treat, and affects both milk output and quality. [ + ]

The CSIRO Board recently endorsed the creation of new business units to strengthen the organisation's health and biotechnology research activities, as well as other areas including food processing.

Premier Peter Beattie continues to lay the foundations for his ambition to make Queensland the nation's biotech-pharma mecca, by launching a new report on the state's growing pharmaceutical industry. [ + ]

Kiwi-born cell-therapy company Living Cell Technologies (ASX:LCT) is to acquire the technology and IP rights of a potential competitor, US-based cell-therapy company Theracyte. [ + ]

A report by Monash University's Australian APEC Study Centre has cast doubt on the ability of patent-based regimes to provide enough incentive to protect the world's genetic resources. [ + ]

The NZ$12 million Australia New Zealand Biotechnology Partnership Fund has awarded NZ$6.76 million in its first round of grants to trans-Tasman biotechnology projects. [ + ]

The 2005 Clinical Trial Congress explored what may be the most private area of any pharmaceutical company's anatomy: its unpublished clinical trials. Must the pharmaceutical industry reveal more? Or should it ride out the cries of journal editors who demand that it disclose the designs and results of trials? That question will roil government regulators, journal editors, and companies of all sizes this year. [ + ]

Bresagen (ASX:BGN) has cancelled its non-renounceable rights issue which the company had hoped would raise AUD$8.8 million, citing failure to meet the minimum subscription of $2 million. [ + ]

Britain's agency charged with assessing whether drugs and procedures are worth their cost has issued a preliminary ruling against all of the four main drugs licensed for treating Alzheimer's disease. [ + ]

Sydney-based Pharmaxis (ASX:PXS) has appointed former Structural Genomix VP of drug discovery Ian Macdonald to the position of chief technical officer. [ + ]

CSL (ASX:CSL) has completed the sale of its JRH Biosciences division to Sigma-Aldrich for US$370 million, and Bionomics (ASX:BNO) has completed the acquisition of a French contract research organisation. [ + ]

Researchers at Sydney's Garvan Institute have identified a gene coding for a cell-adhesion molecule in the brain as a strong risk factor for bipolar disorder, or manic depression. [ + ]

Acrux (ASX:ACR) has commenced dosing in a Phase I clinical trial utilising its MDTS transdermal spray to deliver anti-nausea drug granisetron. The pharmacokinetics trial will compare absorption of the drug, which is used to treat nausea in chemotherapy patients, against that of an oral formulation in six healthy volunteers. [ + ]

Brisbane biotech BioProspect (ASX:BPO) has received a knockback from Sumitomo Australia as a potential licensee for its eucalypt-derived biocide Qcide, as a natural pesticide to control carpet beetles and clothes moths. [ + ]