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April 2006 Volume 2, Issue 4

Volume 2, Issue 4 | April 2006

In this Issue

Bench Press

News Briefs

Automation & Instrumentation

Agilent launches internet-based Intelligent Services

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Agilent Technologies announced at Pittcon 2006 last month a portfolio of internet-based services that promise to monitor its tools in the field.

Varian gets FTMS from IonSpec

PALO ALTO—Varian Inc. announced its acquisition of Ion Spec Corp. and its Fourier transform mass spectrometry (FTMS) technology

Cataloging microbes: Scientists prepare proteomic database of bacteria

BREMEN, Germany—MS specialist Bruker Daltonik announced a collaboration with the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ) to identify and classify microbes from their proteomic profiles

Caliper looks to bring in vitro, in vivo together with Xenogen purchase

HOPKINTON, Mass.—With its agreement to acquire Xenogen Corp., Caliper Life Sciences has embarked on a critical stage to truly bring together in vitro and in vivo experimentation

FEI, Sidec push protein tomography solutions

HILLSBORO, Ore.—FEI and Sidec Technologies announced a collaboration to commercialize protein tomography platforms and services

Informatics

Scripps, IBM to create virus models

BOCA RATON, Fla.—The Scripps Research Institute and IBM will collaborate to advance research on pandemic viruses

BioRad, Infometrix team up

PHILADELPHIA—Bio-Rad Laboratories and Infometrix announced a new informatics application called AnalyzeIt MVP

The schematics of life: Human interactome study raises red flags

BALTIMORE—Researchers at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the University Würzburg, and the Institute of Bioinformatics (IOB)raised significant questions about current drug development assumptions

Compugen leads kinase pathway group

TEL AVIV, Israel—Compugen Ltd. announced it is leading a consortium to simulate the MAP-kinase pathway, a signaling pathway related to cancer

Turning junk into gold

TEL AVIV, Israel—The work with the SIMAP consortium and the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway isn’t Compugen Ltd.’s only recent advance in the area of proteomics work.

Genomics & Proteomics

Ion buy-in: Serologicals acquires Cytomyx

ATLANTA—Serologicals Corp. announced a definitive agreement to acquire Cytomyx

Target Discovery and Eastern Virginia Med School pair up on prostate cancer assays

PALO ALTO, Calif.—Target Discovery announced a collaboration with the Virginia Prostate Center to develop clinical assays for prostate cancer

Complementary behavior: Research orgs ally in protein, discovery work

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.—BASi and the Indiana Centers for Applied Protein Sciences (INCAPS), have agreed to bring their respective contract research strengths together in a corporate alliance

Playing proteomics tag: Perkin Elmer acquires mass tag technology

BOSTON—PerkinElmer announced it acquired labeling technology from Agilix that uses isobaric mass tags for molecular quantification

Crystal-clear collaboration: Qiagen, ActiveSight team up

VENLO, The Netherlands—Qiagenhas entered into a protein crystallography co-marketing agreement with ActiveSight

Research & Development

Brain power: Cedars-Sinai scientists track and kill malignant brain tumors

LOS ANGELES—Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute recently developed a tool to track and kill malignant brain tumor cells

Turning neglect into action: Nonprofit gets funding to fight endemic diseases

GENEVA—The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) received a €9.5-million grant from the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development (DFID)for development of drugs for tropical diseases

Novavax, UPitt team to make novel flu vaccine

MALVERN, Penn.—Novavax announced a collaborative agreement with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine to evaluate virus-like particle (VLP) influenza vaccines and the Novasome delivery adjuvant

REPLICor, NIAID identify potential anti-prion therapeutic

LAVAL, Quebec—REPLICor and NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories collaborated on a therapeutic that may help fight prion disorders, including mad cow and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease

Roche, MorphoSys expand collaboration to atttack cancer

NUTLEY, N.J.—MorphoSys AG announced a collaboration to develop new therapeutic antibodies in oncology

Editor's Focus

Is drug discovery moving too fast?

I’m a big fan of the singer Jack Johnson and for some reason I’ve recently had the song Inaudible Melodies in my head. The song references a story about martial artist Bruce Lee, who apparently moved so quickly that a director for one of his early films asked him to slow down. The reasoning was that he was moving faster than the individual film frames in the camera and that made his action look blurry, or out of focus. The song chorus goes like this:

DNA for Peace

Can fighting poverty, hunger and improving health in the developing world lessen the threat of bioterrorism?

One patient, one vaccine

Personalized medicine—and personalized vaccines, in particular—have generated tremendous interest. Each vaccine must be custom-made for each patient, so for each patient more work must be done than is required for “off-the-shelf” vaccines. What are needed now are methods that enable the manufacture of such products in an affordable and efficient manner.

Vaccines for all

A non-autologous approach to vaccines

April 2006