The share market's habit of batting listed biotech companies around like ping pong balls can leave senior management shell-shocked. Share prices of companies in the drug development, healthcare, diagnostics and medical devices soar on the updraft of a promising licensing agreement or plunge at the twitch of a regulator's eyebrow. [ + ]

A Melbourne-Philadelphia research team has provided a graphic demonstration of the power of genomics and bioinformatics by identifying a host of prospective drug targets in the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. [ + ]

The Victorian branch of AusBiotech has been given a $AUD96,000 boost by the Victorian Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (IIRD), allowing it to appoint a full-time dedicated project officer to coordinate the activities of the state branch. [ + ]

Australian biotech companies can learn a lot by including external and independent non-executive directors with relevant commercial experience on the board of directors, according to David Collingham, founder of European life sciences recruitment firm Ruston Poole. [ + ]

Quadrupled throughput capacity at the Queensland Parallel Supercomputer Foundation (QPSF) is part of an upsurge in high-performance computing resources becoming available to life science-oriented researchers. [ + ]

Stem cell-based regenerative medicine company ES Cell International (ESI) has licensed cutting-edge US technology to speed its path to the commercialisation of a diabetes cell replacement therapy. [ + ]

Australia's first synchrotron would be twice as powerful as originally proposed, the Victorian state government announced yesterday. [ + ]

Scientists from Imperial College London and Cambridge University have developed a rapid, less invasive and low-cost blood test which may help predict the likelihood of a heart attack.

Drug delivery company Acrux is branching out into novel territory with its investee company Cosmeceutic Solutions, a US-based operation set up last year to develop skin care products for the global cosmetics industry based on the company's proprietary Across enhancers. [ + ]

Adelaide biomed Bionomics announced today it has developed a new transgenic mouse model that will allow it rapid testing of candidate compounds to inhibit cancer and other disorders involving angiogenesis -- blood vessel growth. [ + ]

NSW Premier Bob Carr has pledged $AUD10.9 million towards research into spinal injury. [ + ]

Results of a recent study by Swinburne University of Technology researchers may have resolved the long standing question of how tranquillisers affect brain waves. This work is expected to result in the development of new methods for monitoring the effects of drugs on the brain.

In a serendipitous discovery a couple of years ago, Autogen researchers found that the Israeli Sand Rat, Psammomys obesus, which the company uses for its diabetes and obesity gene discovery program, exhibited behaviour indicative of depression and anxiety when isolated from litter mates. [ + ]

Melbourne's Bio21 precinct at the University of Melbourne received a boost today with the announcement that the Victorian State government would provide $AUD5.7 million towards the cost of purchasing an 800-megahertz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer. [ + ]

Work will begin this year on a $AUD17 million Plant Biosciences Facility at LaTrobe University's Research and Development Park in the northern Melbourne suburb of Bundoora. [ + ]