WA-headquartered Australian Cancer Technology has accelerated its breast cancer therapeutic program after reporting good first-stage results. [ + ]

Sixteen National Health and Medical Research Council program grants worth more than $118 million have been awarded to research teams at some of Australia's top research institutions. [ + ]

The National Health and Medical Research Council has awarded more than $5 million to 15 researchers seeking to commercialise their discoveries, in the first round of its new development grant scheme. [ + ]

Hong Kong's Cheong Kong Holdings-backed biotech venture CK Life Sciences is yet to decide which state will house its Australian operations, the company said on Tuesday, as it weighs up offers from some very determined suitors. [ + ]

The Australian Stock Exchange is poised to take an active role in the development of a healthy public biotech sector in Australia. [ + ]

Metabolic Pharmaceuticals has achieved another milestone in its development of a weight-loss drug after demonstrating that its obesity drug AOD 9604 is active after oral administration to human patients. [ + ]

Sleep care company ResMed is living up to a reputation for aggressively defending its market position by launching a US patent infringement lawsuit against competitor Fisher and Paykel Healthcare. [ + ]

Researchers at Griffith University have developed a new method that monitors patients' vital signs, and sends a message to doctors if there is a problem. [ + ]

One of the more interesting collaborations between an Australian biotechnology company and a US company is the alliance between Adelaide genomics company Bionomics and proteomics company Hybrigen, based in Texas. [ + ]

A major strategy statement designed to ensure Australia becomes a stronger global competitor in the field of biotechnological research and development was launched by the CSIRO last week at the AusBiotech2002 Conference in Melbourne.

Don't go public too early, use incubators to get your company off the ground and maximise collaborative opportunities, were the key messages from US venture capitalist Peter Morgan Kash at the AusBiotech 2002 conference this week. [ + ]

Just one in-house technology is not enough, if you're a company that's always looking for new ways to boost your drug discovery and manufacturing capabilities, delegates to this week's AusBiotech conference were told. [ + ]

An Australian-developed technique for sequencing previously intractable regions of genomes is attracting increasing financial backing. [ + ]

Agri-tech company Genetic Solutions will use a $250,000 Biotech Innovation Fund (BIF) grant to ride herd on a database holding more than one million samples of livestock DNA. [ + ]

Melbourne company Metabolic Pharmaceuticals has received a BIF grant of $234,700 to pursue pre-clinical studies on an orally available iron-chelating compound. [ + ]