Fast Company has surveyed the biotech world and come up with its list of the Top 10 companies in the industry. Amyris makes the list for its work combating the malaria parasite, while Galapagos and Fate Therapeutics get nods for pipeline innovation.
Continue reading ‘Fast Company Highlights 10 Top Innovators in Biotech’
U.S. medical researchers are using modified printers to produce skin for burn victims, the project’s leader says. “We started out by taking a typical desktop inkjet cartridge. Instead of ink we use cells, which are placed in the cartridge,” Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., told CNN.
Targeting the neuroinflammatory causes of Parkinson’s disease with a naturally present brain chemical signal could offer a better understanding of the clinical mechanisms of the disease and open a future therapeutic window, reports a team of researchers from the University of South Florida Department Neurosurgery and Brain Repair and the James A. Haley Veterans’ Administration Hospital, Tampa. Brain inflammation has been clearly shown in PD, and the brain’s microglia — small cells that regulate the chemical environment of neural cells — play a role in the inflammatory process and disease progression, said study lead author Paula C. Bickford, PhD, professor of neurosurgery at USF and a senior research career scientist at the Haley VA Hospital.
Exocytosis, the fundamental process by which cells secrete hormones such as insulin and other useful biological substances, is regulated far differently in life than in laboratory tissue cultures and explanted organs, according to research presented at the American Society of Cell Biology’s 50th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. The unexpected findings that exocytosis regulation “in vivo” is not the same as the process long studied “in vitro” is a reminder of the gap between laboratory glassware experiments and the cell biology of living animals ⎯ and humans, said Roberto Weigert, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR).
Continue reading ‘Small Details between ‘In Vivo’ and ‘In Vitro’ Studies Make for Big Differences’
Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have uncovered clues to memory and learning by exploring the function of a single gene that governs how neurons form new connections. The finding may also provide insights into a form of human mental retardation. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists explored the gene WRP’s functions in the brain cell (neuron) and then demonstrated how acutely memory and learning are affected when WRP is missing in mice.
Continue reading ‘Mental Retardation Gene Provides Insights into Brain Formation’
Calvert Labs is offering clients the same kind of 24/7 on-demand smartphone access to study information that’s available to the rest of the world for news and sports. It’s linked a project-tracking iPhone application with a near-real-time and on-demand filtered information source for preclinical researchers.
Continue reading ‘CRO’s iPhone App Gives On-demand Study Updates’
It was Max Wicha of the University of Michigan who first identified breast cancer stem cells back in 2003. Now, Wicha and colleagues have identified a possible way to attack these cells, which are responsible for a tumor’s growth and spread.
Continue reading ‘New Plan of Attack Against Breast Cancer Stem Cells’
As investors lay down their final bets on the FDA’s looming decision on MannKind’s Afrezza, the company’s wealthy CEO has opted to put his money where his mouth has been–doubling down on an ambitious wager that the much-maligned inhaled insulin treatment Afrezza will get a green light from regulators.
Big upfront fees are out. Milestones are in. Partnerships will stay hot. The IPO window will stay open, despite a lackluster record in 2010. And investor confidence will grow, helping public biotech companies outperform the general market.
Continue reading ‘Burrill Predicts Big Surge in Biotech Buyouts for 2011′
UCSF researchers have shown for the first time that the human fetal immune system arises from an entirely different source than the adult immune system, and is more likely to tolerate than fight foreign substances in its environment. The finding could lead to a better understanding of how newborns respond to both infections and vaccines, and may explain such conundrums as why many infants of HIV-positive mothers are not infected with the disease before birth, the researchers said.
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