Internal Medicine

The results of a four-year sponsored research program with the University of New Hampshire (UNH) Nanostructured Polymers Research Center came to fruition in early May when Bentley Pharmaceuticals announced its new Nanocaplet technology.

Chemicon International Inc., a subsidiary of Serologicals Corp., has expanded its exclusive worldwide agreement with Amrad Corp Ltd and The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) of Medical Research.

The National Center for Drug Screening (NCDS) here and Cellomics Inc. of Pittsburgh have added to their strategic collaboration aimed at expanding the application of High Content Screening (HCS) technologies in China.

Elsevier MDL, a provider of cheminformatic solutions to the pharmaceutical and life-sciences industries, recently launched a dedicated, phased program to build a robust, scalable, enterprise-strength electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) built on MDL’s Isentris technology and scheduled for delivery in 2006.

Whatman Inc., has expanded its reach into the drug discovery market and DNA purification with the recent introduction of the EasyClone 384 plate, which replaces traditional freezer-storage methods and allows biotechnology, pharmaceutical, government and academic research labs to archive, ship and purify clones at room temperature.

Solexa Inc. recently raised $32.5 million in private equity financing, the bulk of which will be used to fund further development and commercialization of a synthesis-by-sequencing (SBS) molecular array platform for genetic analysis.

Stratagene and the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center (SKCC) announced in mid-April a licensing agreement covering patents and related technology developed by SKCC researcher Dr. Gennadi Glinsky, under which Stratagene will produce diagnostic tests for prostate and breast cancers.

With an eye to developing therapeutics against neurodegenerative disease, Applied NeuroSolutions (ANS) recently joint-licensed a transgenic mouse line with the not-for-profit Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene at the Nathan S. Kline Research Institute that exhibits human disease pathology.

Although biopharmaceutical firm Adherex already has a promising N-cadherin antagonist currently in clinical trials, that drug candidate lacks a very important aspect: the ability to be administered orally.

Welcome to the first monthly issue of Drug Discovery News, a trade publication like no other in the drug discovery field. Over the past four months, it has been a pleasure immersing myself in the industry, all while attempting not to drown in the deluge of information. From the floors of Lab Automation 2005 in San Jose, to Pitttcon in Orlando and back to my office in Portland, Maine, my conversations with you have yielded a new vocabulary which only yield blank looks from my family at the end of the day when I start waxing poetic about RNAi, GPCRs, HPLC or MALDI MS.

SciTegic Inc. announced in March an independent software vendor (ISV) partner program that is will allow the ISV’s tools and applications to run seamlessly on SciTegic’s flagship Pipeline Pilot informatics system.

The biological assay market got a little smaller in February with the announcement by Illumina that it had signed a definitive agreement to merge with and eventually take over CyVera Corp.