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10 January 2009 | By
When talking about stem cell research and its contribution to medical innovation, distinction should be made between embryonic stem cell research, believed to have almost infinite potential but with quite long-term perspectives, and adult stem cell research, which is already offering new therapeutic applications for otherwise incurable diseases. Today, adult…
10 January 2009 | By
The awarding of the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Fenn, Tanaka, and Wüthrich for their work on methods for the identification and structural characterisation of biomolecules has heralded the increasing importance of proteomics in biomedical and fundamental research. Today, vendors offer a variety of mass spectrometric instruments to provide a…
10 January 2009 | By
Among the challenges for the pharmaceutical industry, declining research productivity and increasing research costs take a prominent position. This is often put in the context of efforts in the pharmaceutical industry to automate and "industrialise" research activities, combinatorial chemistry and High Throughput Screening being the most prominent examples. An argument…
10 January 2009 | By Martin Warman, Director, MWC Ltd
As the industry approaches the five year anniversary of the ground breaking regulator initiatives (the ‘PAT framework' and ‘cGMPs for the 21st Century'1,2), it is time to assess the impact they have had on the industry and to look forward to what the industry may look like in another five…
10 January 2009 | By
The historical demarcation of prokaryotes has not been by way of a specific scientific-based concept, but has been defined by a more arbitrary, anthropocentric system, rooted in the practical necessity of the time of its inception, based on the information available at the time. Therefore, species are historically defined on…
3 December 2008 | By
Recently, small RNAs such as microRNAs (miRNAs) have been demonstrated to be important regulators in both plants and animals. In animals miRNAs act as translational repressors of target genes through a combination of inhibition of translation and mRNA destabilisation. These molecules have been implicated in a multitude of diseases, including…
3 December 2008 | By
The fluorescence-based quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)1,2,3 has become firmly established as the preferred technology for the detection and quantification of nucleic acids in molecular diagnostics, life sciences, agriculture and medicine4,5.
3 December 2008 | By
In its Research Framework Programme 7 (2007-2013), the European Commission sets the focus in health research on bringing the huge high-throughput data collection efforts of earlier programmes to the systems level. The ultimate goal of systems biology is the integration of various types of experimental data into models that represent…
3 December 2008 | By
The development of pharmaceuticals and screening the biological activity of test compounds is a multi-staged process spanning from small molecule design and synthesis, in vitro testing, and compound evaluation in vivo using animal and human trials. The expense of this process escalates as a compound advances further into the development…
3 December 2008 | By
This year’s congress will include the Keynote Speakers Bernard Siegal, Executive Director at the Genetics Policy Institute, Jan Nolta, Director at the Stem Cell Programme in the University of California and Carolyn Compton, Director at the Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research in the National Cancer Institute.
3 December 2008 | By
Approximately 45% of all deaths and 50% of all hospitalisations in the western world are a direct result of cardiovascular disease. Cardiomyocyte hypertrophy is a mechanism by which myocardial mass is increased to compensate for any elevated physical demands placed upon the heart, thus ensuring that adequate perfusion of body…
3 December 2008 | By
Last year over 400 thought leaders gathered at the Fifth Annual High-Content Analysis meeting at the San Francisco Fairmont Hotel, on 14-17 January, to discuss the latest technologies and applications in high-content analysis. This year over 400 delegates are expected to attend and over sixty speakers will appear.
3 December 2008 | By
High Throughput Screening (HTS) has for many years now been playing a central role in drug discovery efforts to aid the identification of small molecule chemical entities that are capable of modifying the activity of disease relevant targets1. In order to make HTS a viable option to provide appropriate starting…
3 December 2008 | By
From around the world, a diverse and highly innovative group of academicians, scientists, engineers, post-doctoral associates, graduate students, and business leaders will converge at LabAutomaton2009. The show will be held on 24-28 January 2009, at the Palm Springs Convention Centre, Palm Springs, California.
3 December 2008 | By
Neurotoxicology is not a discipline that can expect to be popular in pharmaceutical circles. It is a not unreasonable prejudice amongst people working in drug development that even a suggestion that a candidate drug might be neurotoxic is enough to halt development, or at the least to stimulate a highly…
