Biotech business is booming again, according to several newspaper reports last week. Bill Castell, head of Nycomed Amersham, said last week the company may float its life sciences business, in recognition of the increasing importance of the new 'gene economy'. The firm, which makes research products, is considering the partial...
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is telephoning every researcher who has ever registered a clinical gene therapy trial, in an effort to track down all previously unreported 'adverse events'. The move follows recent concern over hundreds of failed gene therapy experiments, including several deaths, which went unreported at...
Donna Maclean, a poet and casino waitress from Bristol, is trying to become the first person to patent herself. She has made her unique application to the patent office in an attempt to register her anger at the mass patenting of genes by scientists and biotech companies. 'There's a kind...
Gene therapy researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, may not get to test a promising new gene therapy delivery system in humans. The team, which recently reported success using the so-called 'gutless' virus in animals, may be stopped from carrying out human trials by the company...
A mistake in a European patent granted to Edinburgh University apparently allows the production of genetically altered humans, say critics. The patent covers a method for isolating and growing stem cells - cells that can grow into any type of tissue - from genetically altered animals. But as it stands the patent...
Scientists have nearly finished sequencing the fruit fly genome, almost a year ahead of schedule. American firm Celera Genomics, along with the Berkley Drosophila Genome Project and The European Drosophila Project, will publish their joint results in the journal Science next month. The announcement boosts Celera's controversial claim that it...
Human geneticists in Japan will soon be required to obtain informed consent from anyone providing them with a DNA sample, under draft guidelines released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare last week. The new ethics rules will apply to all research funded by the ministry, including a large study...
Tony Blair believes that GM foods and crops have the potential for harm, as well as for good. In an article for the Independent on Sunday yesterday, the Prime Minister said the jury was still out on the new food technology and that there was cause for legitimate public concern...
Infertility expert Simon Fishel has lost his legal battle with Nottingham University to keep £400,000 he made from working in embryology clinics abroad. The High Court found Dr Fishel liable for making a profit from treatment he carried out using university embryologists. He was also found liable for breach of...
Gemini Holdings, the company that launched a genetic database project in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada this month, is to be floated on the stock market. The Nasdaq flotation is likely to value the company at more than $200 million. Meanwhile, the value of PPL Therapeutics' shares rose this week, following...
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