A sudden surge in pSivida's share price this month focused attention on the biomaterials company's growing string of promising alliances. [ + ]

Cancer vaccine developer Australian Cancer Technology is mystified and disappointed by negative share market reaction to positive news from human trials of its cancer vaccine, Pentrix. [ + ]

Prima Biomed has become the latest biotech company to successfully raise additional funds through a private placement to institutional and professional investors. [ + ]

Prof Rob Baxter, Director of the Kolling Institute of Medical Research at the Royal North Shore Hospital and head of the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Sydney, has been awarded the 2002 Ramaciotti medal and $20,000 for his research on insulin-like growth factors and their binding proteins. [ + ]

Finicky beefeater Jack Sprat and his lipophilic wife would be amazed at what the meat industry is doing these days with the bits neither would eat. [ + ]

Adelaide-based biotech company GroPep pre-empted the complaints of its shareholders at its annual general meeting yesterday, with chairman Richard England noting at the beginning of his speech that the year was the worst in the company's history. [ + ]

EpiTan has received approval from the ethics committee at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to conduct part of its phase IIb clinical trial there for its melanin-producing drug Melanotan. [ + ]

Flinders University spin-off Flinders Bioremediation is continuing to expand its business operations despite the recent loss of founder and managing director Dr Nick McClure, who passed away in September. [ + ]

Cancer research is all hard slog, a long journey of many small steps, punctuated all too rarely by a genuine leap forward -- like the one announced today by CSL and its partner, pharma giant Merck and Co. [ + ]

Starpharma has been granted a third broad US patent for its dendrimer technology, covering applications for anti-microbial and anti-parasitic compositions. [ + ]

Sirtex Medical is on track to achieve its goal of rolling out its SIR-Spheres cancer treatment in ten US hospitals by the end of the year, according to CEO Colin Sutton, with the ninth centre at Emory University Hospital treating its first two patients last week. [ + ]

A Monash University researcher is helping improve forecasting and our understanding of weather patterns by using global positioning system (GPS) satellites to measure water vapour in the atmosphere.

Prof Peter Darvall has resigned from his board position at Melbourne drug discovery company Metabolic Pharmaceuticals due to his commitments as vice-chancellor of Monash University. [ + ]

Research which aims to make laboratory-grown leukaemia cells change form and used to prime a patient's immune system to kill malignant cells has begun in Edinburgh, Scotland. If successful, the project could give clinicians a way of destroying residual leukaemic cells which are undetectable by microscope.

The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has appointed eminent American parasitologist Prof Michael Wallach as director of its new Institute for the Biotechnology of Infectious Diseases. [ + ]