Cancer

Kinexus Bioinformatics Corp. will introduce its subscription-based KiNET database this fall, giving researchers a new online resource for functional proteomics data.

Biomolecular technology and pharmaceutical company Odyssey Thera announced recently it had signed an agreement to provide the NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) with a cell-based compound screening system that will be used to further the NIH Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative. The technology, protein-fragment complementation assay (PCA), will allow NCGC to screen human cell lines for the impact of potential drugs on biochemical pathways. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

With the publication of the August 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientific community got a sneak peek of a discovery at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), that led to the development of what are being referred to as smart bio-nanotubes.

NeoRx in August became the first biotechnology company to enter into a research alliance with Scripps Florida, the newly established Palm Beach County, Fla., division of La Jolla, Calif.-based Scripps Research. The focus of this collaboration is on discovering novel, small-molecule, multi-targeted, protein kinase inhibitors as therapeutic agents, such as those needed for cancer treatment.

Every so often, it is good for us to challenge the so-called truths that we hold dear, for it is often our defense of these truths that keep us from seeing the advantages around the corner. Until Stanley Prusiner and colleagues elucidated the mechanism of prion replication, few of us could conceive of an infectious disease that could propagate without a nucleic acid intermediate. Thalidomide offers a particularly special example of being a wonder drug that was vilified when its use as an anti-nauseate was linked to birth defects. And yet later still, it has seen a renaissanceas scientists have begun to use it as an effective treatment for cancer when proper precautions are followed.

The conventional approaches used to discover biomarkers that can be used to help us understand disease and assay for its presence or response to drug treatment represent a wonderful start. They involve looking at differential biology at the protein level and trying to see if there are changes, racing to sequence all of the changes, and then going back to the literature or reconciling with one’s own hypotheses to choose which of the changed proteins are really relevant to the clinical question you are asking. Whatever the clinical question, whether it is detection of disease, determining the likelihood of response or an adverse reaction to a drug, you have to choose the right biomarkers and then build reproducible, precise assays.

Unlocking fundamental secrets about how cell division is regulated is the goal of a European Union-funded consortium called MitoCheck. One of the means to that goal is a genome-wide short interfering RNA (siRNA) library that life science research and molecular diagnostic provider Ambion and its subsidiary Ambion (Europe) Ltd. recently agreed to provide to the consortium—specifically to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany.

GeneLogic Inc. announced last month that it had chosen GE Healthcare for the global distribution of its new Sciantis System, an online gene expression analysis system targeted for use by academic, government and other non-profit research organizations. The release of Sciantis marks the company’s first attempt to provide products to this particular market segment.

Nanotechnology life sciences company Nanosphere Inc. recently announced the hiring of Gregory Shipp, M.D., as vice president of medical affairs to spearhead the company’s commercialization efforts of its Verigene genomic and proteomic diagnostic tool.

In a deal between Adherex and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) penned in July, Adherex received an exclusive license to the oncology product eniluracil for all indications, while GSK gained an option to license Adherex’s lead biotechnology compound, ADH-1.

ViroLogic Inc, announced in early July it signed a three-year $4.8 million service agreement with the Schering-Plough Research Institute. Schering-Plough will use ViroLogic assays during Phase III clinical trails for its drug candidate vicriviroc, a potential new entry inhibitor drug for HIV.

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) recently selected Perlegen Sciences, Inc. to conduct a comparative study of genetic variation among postmenopausal women with coronary heart disease, stroke, or breast cancer. The women are subjects in a 15-year observational study and clinical trial program that includes a component looking at estrogen plus progestin (E+P) therapy. The genetic analysis will investigate whether E+P contributed to incidences of the three diseases.