The top two pharmaceutical companies have signaled their commitment
to the adoption of radiofrequency identification (RFID) and
electronic product code (EPC) technologies in the battle against
counterfeit drugs.
The ingredients division of Danish company Chr Hansen pulled in a
DKK 369 million (€49m) profit for the fiscal year on sales of DKK
3.4 billion (€460m), a slight dip on the previous year on rising
costs.
LION bioscience has said it plans to cut its headcount by at least
50 per cent as part of a new restructuring drive, with most cuts
being felt at the company's facilities in Heidelberg, Germany.
The pharmaceutical industry is doing little to help people with
impaired or partial sight get information from drug labels,
according to a new study which found a font change could alleviate
the issue.
Lonza has commissioned a new current Good Manufacturing
Practice-compliant facility for the production of microbially
derived biopharmaceuticals at its largest worldwide production
centre in Visp, Switzerland.
Germany drugmaker Schering is planning to reduce its headcount by
1,250 with most of the cuts coming in production. The company is
blaming increased cost pressures due to European and international
competition.
US drug delivery company Zengen has announced that its consumer
health subsidiary InnoZen has launched another over-the-counter
(OTC) pharmaceutical in oral film strip format, a delivery vehicle
that is being pursued by a number of...
In the race to develop therapeutics based on RNA interference,
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals has claimed a first with the publication of
a study showing in vivo RNAi-mediated gene silencing in
mammals by a method that potentially can be...
Guava Technologies have introduced a new cell cycle assay to add to
its range of personal cell analysis systems, which intends to make
drug discovery applications in the areas of immunology and oncology
more sensitive and accurate.
The march towards multidrug therapy of asthma has caused Italy's
Zambon to pull out of a research project aimed at developing new
inhaler formulations of the steroid budesonide and bronchodilator
formoterol.
Canada's SemBioSys Genetics has been granted a US patent on a
vaccine production system that uses genetically modified seeds as
biological factories of vaccine antigens.
US drug delivery company Emisphere Technologies reported promising
results last week with an oral formulation of insulin that could do
away with the need for injections in people with diabetes.
Millipore has launched a new pump designed to improve sterility
testing of materials in aseptic manufacturing. The Steritest
Equinox pump is a liquid transfer pump for sterility testing in
laminar flow hoods.
Molecular Devices has unveiled for the first time worldwide a new
microplate reader which advances on its SpectraMax M2 dual
absorbance and fluorescence plate reader platform by offering a
broader range of microtitre plate applications...
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has joined forces
with a Taiwanese company Abnova, to develop a high-throughput
system for making monoclonal antibodies (MAbs).
Hamilton Life Science Robotics has further extended its STARline
liquid handling workstations by launching the microlab STARplus,
which provides the opportunity to integrate third party equipment,
without the need for expensive robotic...
A number of measures to help make the UK Medicines and Healthcare
Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) and the pharmaceutical
industry operate more openly and transparently were announced late
last week by the country's Health...
Dharmacon has launched a range of small interfering RNA (siRNA)
transfection reagents designed specifically to enhance transfection
efficiency, a crucial procedure in initial drug target
identification to late-stage therapeutic development.
Applera subsidiary Applied Biosystems was awarded a US patent
covering real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) instruments at
the end of last week, and immediately filed lawsuits against three
rival manufacturers.
A pioneering research project could pave the way for more effective
drug treatments for diseases including cancer, parasitic, bacterial
and viral diseases by visualising, in detail, membrane proteins
that have the potential to be...
A new study suggests that there are important differences between
Merck & Co's Vioxx (rofecoxib) and other COX-2 inhibitors and
that this may account for variations in cardiovascular safety
within this drug class, writes...
Plastics are featuring more often in the packaging of healthcare
products, including pharmaceuticals, and this will drive a 28 per
cent increase in the volume of plastic resins used between now and
2009 in North America.
Drug giant Pfizer has completed its purchase of UK-based drug
delivery company Meridica in a move that it says will bolster its
activities in allergy and respiratory medicine.
Lactose specialist Borculo Domo has teamed up with Univar to ramp
up its presence in the Scandinavian pharmaceutical market, part of
a concerted effort to improve its standing internationally.
A new approach to outwit resistance to antibiotics has been
discovered by a team of researchers who hope to apply this
knowledge to form new strategies and targets to combat
drug-resistant bacteria ubiquitous in both hospital settings...
A laboratory test that is able to detect methicillin resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) a day earlier then traditional
antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) gives fresh impetus to
treatment and infection control efforts that...
Merck & Co has licensed rights to a novel drug for the
treatment of stroke, developed by Japan's Ono Pharmaceutical, in
the hope of developing what would be only the second drug to treat
the disease.
Sweden's Cellectricon has launched a new microfluidic chip product
that promises to speed up the screening of drugs that interact with
ion channels, an important drug target that make up around 15 per
cent of all medicines on...
BioProgress, which makes cellulose based XGEL films for coating
tablets and capsules, has signed an agreement with a contract
manufacturing organisation to accelerate the installation of its
own film manufacturing capacity.
Galapagos Genomics are set to receive additional milestone payments
of up to $40 million (€30.9 million) after its osteoporosis
discovery program with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals resulted in the US
drug gaints successfully selecting novel...
With just a few weeks to go before the introduction of India's new
patent regime - which will increase protection to include product
as well as process patents - a group of government Ministers is
calling for a waiver that would...
The first ever-manufacturing agreement for a drug based on small
interfering RNA emphasises the potential of this pioneering
therapeutic approach, which could be a fertile stamping ground for
contract manufacturers.
Active-Pak Automation claims that companies installing its
dessicant sachet dispensing systems can achieve cost savings of up
to 40 per cent compared to systems based on canisters, offsetting
the capital costs of installing the machinery.
Exiqon has launched two new ProbeLibrary expression analysis kits,
covering the genomes of Arabidopsis thaliana and
Drosophila melanogaster, the most widely used models in
disease process and drug target studies.
Nitto Denko and antisense specialist Isis Pharmaceuticals have
jointly developed a new solid support for the manufacture of
oligonucleotides that promises to reduce the high manufacturing
costs for this type of drug.
Argonaut Technologies has announced the introduction of EVOLUTE ABN
(Acidic Basic Neutral), a product that extracts drugs from
biological fluids through improved phase extraction.
Borealis has developed new advanced Borseal terpolymers to improve
biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP), a raw material used in
clear film packaging.
Setting aside the acrimony of a patent dispute, UK separations
company Whatman is to buy German rival Schleicher & Schuell for
€50.2 million, allowing it to narrow the gap between itself and the
main players Pall and Millipore.
The news that US President George Bush will be residing at the
White House for a further four years has been greeted with some
measure of relief by the pharmaceutical industry, which had been
worried about drug price curbs in the...
US company Spherix has made the first sale of its Naturlose
sweetener to a company in the pharmaceutical sector, since the
products was cleared for this application last December.
Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk has announced plans for a
significant expansion of its production facilities in China,
expanding its capabilities to accommodate the increasing demand for
its FlexPen, NovoPen and Penfill products.
US drug delivery company SCOLR Pharma, announced it has filed a
provisional patent application utilizing the company's patented
amino acid technology for the Controlled Delivery Technology (CDT)
extended release form of ondansetron.
UK drug discovery company Inpharmatica has raised £13.9 million
(€19.9 million) in a third round stock financing with several
top-tier biotechnology investors and says it will use the proceeds
to progress its PharmaCarta platform...
In-Pharmatechnologist's periodic round up of personnel moves in the
pharmaceutical sector includes a crop of new chief executives and
senior managers across the pharmachem, drug development and
manufacturing sectors.
A new study has revealed that a commonly used asthma medication
lost more than half its potency after being kept for just four
hours in conditions akin to a mailbox on a hot day. This raises
questions about the efficacy of mail-order...
Researchers from medical charity Cancer Research UK have discovered
a new gene that protects against lung cancer, according to a study
published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences..
The development of antimicrobial therapies and vaccines to treat
biological terrorism threats such as anthrax and smallpox has been
made easier by an automated colony counting system, which the
company claim, significantly improves...
A tiny pressure sensor already sold in the automotive industry
could improve the efficacy of pumps used to deliver drugs from
implanted reservoirs, according to one of the scientists behind the
project.
Printing solutions specialist Zebra Technologies, a specialist in
radio frequency identification (RFID) labels, has launched two new
UHF (ultra high frequency) EPC (electronic product code) multi-
protocol printer/encoders, the Zebra...
