Internal Medicine

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.

With the $11-million purchase of Transfluor technology assets from Xsira Pharmaceuticals in early March, Molecular Devices Corp. officials say the company significantly strengthened its position as a provider of tools for imaging and G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) assays.

After a few years of funding academic research and observing advances in the burgeoning field of RNAi, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics (CFFT) Inc., recently announced its first funding of a commercial partner to initiate discovery research for a potential RNAi therapeutic for CF.

In an effort to become a one-stop-shop to clients, DNA sequencing specialist Agencourt Bioscience and genomic library producer Amplicon Express announced they formed a strategic marketing alliance.

Agilent Technologies Inc. in early March launched eArray 3.0, a secure Web portal that allows life sciences researchers to go online to design microarray customized to their specific research needs.

Ambit Biosciences recently announced the appointments of Dr. Robert deGroof and Dr. Shripad Bhagwat to the positions of senior vice president of development and senior vice president of drug discovery, respectively.

Acquisition of Computational Biology provides key ChIP-on-Chip technology