Devices company USCOM is seeking to raise AUD$16 million in an IPO to raise funds to commercialise its heart monitor. [ + ]

A steaming, sulphurous spring in the caldera of the world's coldest, most isolated volcano has yielded a powerful new forensic tool that will make it even tougher for criminals to evade the law. [ + ]

A University of Melbourne spin-off and pioneering bionic ear company Cochlear have joined forces to develop a treatment for severe incontinence. [ + ]

Melbourne drug design company Biota Holdings is preparing to sign up a partner to develop its new lead compound to quell the so-called 'common' cold. [ + ]

Melbourne-based Metabolic Pharmaceuticals (ASX:MBP) has commenced what it says is the largest clinical trial ever undertaken by an Australian biotech, a Phase IIb trial of its obesity drug, AOD9604. [ + ]

Melbourne-based Iliad Chemicals has appointed former Cerylid Biosciences scientist Dr Gino Vairo as head of drug discovery and development as it ramps up its efforts to identify a lead candidate. [ + ]

First there was golden rice, a genetically modified variant of the world's number two cereal, designed to prevent blindness and ill health in an estimated 400 million malnourished people in Asia and Africa, whose monotonous diet of rice leaves them vulnerable to blindness and ill health. Now Western Australian company Grain Biotech Australia has engineered an experimental wheat, the world's number one cereal crop, that could help by keeping over-nourished Westerners in the pink of health. [ + ]

Dr Jeremy Burdon is to succeed Dr Jim Peacock as chief of CSIRO Plant Industry, the organisation's chief executive, Dr Geoff Garrett, announced today. [ + ]

Cryptome Pharmaceuticals, the first in a series of Australian biotechs scheduled to float in the next few months, made its debut on the ASX today with a starting price of AUD$0.25 and a market capitalisation of $12.6 million, after raising $6.6 million in its IPO. [ + ]

Prof Garth Cooper, CEO of Auckland biopharmaceutical company Protemix, aims to make his company the first New Zealand biotech to take a discovered compound all the way to market. [ + ]

Queensland company Xenome has received a AUD$3.2 million R&D Start grant from the Federal government to accelerate the development of its lead chronic pain drug, Xen2174 into early clinical trials. [ + ]

Researchers at the Joint Proteomics Laboratory (JPSL) at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research are using a new proteomics technology to remove common high-abundance proteins from plasma before analysis. [ + ]

Diabetes researchers at Sydney's Garvan Institute have identified a gene that plays a key role in cellular sensitivity to insulin -- and which could be a target for anti-obesity drugs. [ + ]

Dunedin biotech Blis Technologies has opened a portal into a potential AUD$200 million market by signing a deal with Auckland-based Asia-Pacific Biotech Distributors to take its antibacterial Throat Guard into China. [ + ]

Small companies within Australia's growing life sciences industry are starting to compute like the big boys, thanks to a growing investment in the sector by companies keen to feed its hunger for high-performance computing (HPC) systems. [ + ]