Melbourne-based company Cardia Technologies has wrapped its medical biotech projects into a new wholly-owned subsidiary company, Big Pharma Ltd. [ + ]

Melbourne pharmaceutical company Acrux has done an IP swap with Soltec Research that will allow both companies to further their development of transdermal and topical therapeutics. [ + ]

The University of NSW is holding a workshop on stem cells on November 19th for all NSW researchers working with or interested in working with stem cells. [ + ]

Scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in the US and collaborators elsewhere have deciphered the genome of a metal ion-reducing bacterium, Shewanella oneidensis, that has great potential as a bioremediation agent to remove toxic metals from the environment.

The announcement that pSivida's porous silicon technology, BioSilicon, has shown it can perform diagnostic tests when applied as a skin patch opens up new revenue horizons for the Perth biotech. [ + ]

The co-director of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience>, Prof John Mattick, has resigned from his position on Benitec's board of directors while he is in Germany on a sabbatical. [ + ]

Sydney-based company Sirtex Medical has been awarded the Humanitarian Benefit Device of the Year 2002 for its SIR-Spheres liver cancer treatment by Frost and Sullivan, a US-based market consulting and analyst group. [ + ]

Acting chairman Brett Heading introduced a "new" Autogen to friends and supporters of the company today at the launch of its new high-throughput genotyping facility at the Toorak campus of Deakin University in Melbourne. [ + ]

The BioMelbourne Network has received a boost from the Victorian government in the form of $750,000 funding over the next three years to launch the organisation as an independent state-based biotechnology agency. [ + ]

If you wanted to show off the power of a new tool for identifying potentially therapeutic proteins, you couldn't do better than running a routine demonstration and chancing upon a long-sought Factor X that wards off AIDS. It happened this year to US-based company Ciphergen Biosystems, which has developed a new protein-hunting technology called ProteinChip. [ + ]

Perth skin replacement company Clinical Cell Culture (C3) has caught the attention of Nasdaq-listed US artificial skin specialist Integra Life Sciences Corporation. [ + ]

The malaria parasite genome has been sequenced and is already revealing novel drug targets that could lead to effective treatment of the disease.

Life science researchers at CSIRO will soon get access to a powerful new computing cluster as the nation's largest scientific organisation prepares for the February launch of a dedicated bioinformatics supercomputer. [ + ]

Life science related infrastructure projects have been funded to the tune of nearly $10.5 million in the latest round of Australian Research Council linkage, infrastructure and equipment (LIEF) grants. [ + ]

Prefer your hamburger rare? Big beef-eating countries have been experiencing an epidemic of 'hamburger disease' in recent years, caused by pathogenic strains of the gut microbe E. coli that originate in animals. [ + ]