Agilent Technologies has launched a software package to help drug
companies keep a close eye on the quality of chemical compounds.
The firm says the product is the first of its kind, allowing a more
than seven-fold increase in the...
Danish company Chr Hansen saw its revenues slip 4 per cent in its
first quarter, as the impact of the economic downturn and tough
dollar exchange rate was felt across its business units.
A rheumatoid arthritis drug developed by Franco-German company
Aventis has been linked to the deaths of five patients in Japan,
prompting the company to warn against prescribing the drug to
people with respiratory problems.
A small US company has developed an encapsulation technology for
pharmaceuticals that promises to overcome a major healthcare
problem - deaths and illness caused by aspirin and other
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).
Active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturer Tetrionics is
planning to double the capacity at a facility in the US to hike its
ability to make highly potent compounds.
Millipore has teamed up with HyClone Laboratories in an alliance
that brings the concept of disposable factory for
biopharmaceuticals production a step closer.
Monsanto and Pfizer's Pharmacia subsidiary have asked a federal
judge to either deny or postpone a request by Solutia to eliminate
liabilities to its former parent Monsanto.
A new metal detector capable of picking up ferrous and stainless
steel contamination within aluminium foil wrapped products has been
developed. Manufactured by German technology firm Sartorius, the
product, called the Observer, promises...
Eksigent Technologies is launching a new high-pressure liquid
chromatography system in March that can increase throughput
compared to rival HPLC systems as much as six-fold.
Filtration specialist Millipore has reported strong growth in sales
in the fourth quarter of 2003, suggesting that the fortunes of the
biopharmaceutical industry - Millipore's primary customer - may be
on the up.
Australia's Gradipore has been boosted by news that its Gradiflow
separation technology has been scaled up to produce commercial
quantities of an antibody from source plasma.
Dutch biotechnology company Crucell has appointed a new chief
execvutive as it continues its transition from a company
specialising in enabling technologies to one focuused on product
development.
Israel-headquartered generics company Teva Pharmaceutical
Industries has completed its $3.4 billion takeover of US company
SICOR, which makes generics and active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Healthcare giant Cardinal Health reported revenues up 11 per cent
to $14.1 billion (€11.2bn) in the fourth-quarter of 2003, as a
strong performance in its pharmaceutical manufacturing services,
pharmacy automation and medical product...
Germany's Wacker Specialties has signed an R&D agreement with
Finland's Prokaria to bolster its activities in chiral alcohols,
used as chemical building blocks by the pharmaceutical industry.
Since they were introduced in the early 1990s, beta interferons
have become the standard of care for patients with the
neurodegenerative disease multiple sclerosis, but up to a third of
MS patients do not derive a benefit from these...
Japanese pharmaceutical companies must build strong, in-house,
R&D capabilities in order to survive, according to research
from market analyst firm Datamonitor. But this is not simply a
matter of spending more money; strategic...
French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Synthelabo has launched a
hostile takeover bid for its larger rival Aventis, in a move which
would create a top three drug major.
Switzerland's Bachem saw its 2003 sales slip by 3 per cent as
continued slack demand for research chemicals held back a modest
increase in its active pharmaceutical ingredients business.
A commercial unit of the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) has
launched a gene-silencing library - based on small interfering RNA
(siRNA) - that covers 90 per cent of the genome of the fruitfly
Drosophila melanogaster which is widely...
Last year, pharmaceutical companies from India submitted a third of
all the Drug Master Files for active pharma ingredients (APIs)
received in the US, outstripping their international rivals by a
wide margin.
Chiltern International, one of Europe's leading mid-sized contract
research organisations, has opened up an office in Ukraine to tap
into a growing market for clinical trial services in central and
Eastern Europe.
If 2003 was marked by consolidation in the biotechnology industry,
then in 2004 the spotlight seems to have tracked firmly back to
pharmaceuticals - and particularly the European majors.
Irish pharmaceutical group Elan has raised around $70 million
(€55m) from four new deals, including the sale of formulation and
manufacturing interests.
BioCatalytics has expanded its product line of enzymes for chemical
synthesis with the addition of new ketoreductases (KRED) enzymes
for the stereoselective reduction of ketones.
The bacterium Listeria monocytogenes is well known as a
cause of food poisoning, but could also improve the safety and
effectiveness of vaccines for a number of viral diseases, according
to US researchers.
General Electric's €8.1 billion acquisition of the UK's Amersham
was approved by the European Union yesterday, after it concluded
that the deal would not create a monopoly in Europe's medical
imaging market.
German contract ingredient manufacturer Girindus posted its first
profit since it was floated on the stock exchange in 2000 in the
last quarter of 2003, as sales rose 16 per cent to €32 million.
UK-headquartered NextGen Sciences has formed an alliance with
Germany's Protagen aimed at developing 'biochips' that can contain
thousands of functional proteins for use in drug discovery.
Dowpharma has developed new strains of the bacterium Pseudomonas
fluorescens that can be used to improve the yield of
recombinant proteins made in fermentation vats.
Scientists at the Babraham Institute in the UK have discovered that
a tiny change in a protein involved in cell survival is responsible
for abnormal cell activity in the early stages of cancer.
Understanding how the cancer gets going...
Israel's Teva has moved a step closer to consolidating its position
as the world's biggest generics manufacturer with the $3.4 billion
(€2.7bn) acquisition of US-based SICOR, which makes active
pharmaceutical ingredients...
A hoped-for recovery in the second half of 2003 failed to
materialise at Lonza, causing the chemicals and custom
manufacturing firm to post steep declines in sales and profits for
the full-year.
Denmark's Novo Nordisk is to invest €218 million in a plant to
manufacture insulin in Chartres, France, one of the group's largest
investments outside its home market.
Amersham Biosciences has responded to competition in the
marketplace for purifying tagged proteins with the launch of Ni
Sepharose, a new affinity chromatography medium.
The number of novel pharmaceutical compounds approved for marketing
- a traditional benchmark for the industry's R&D performance -
has seen a welcome increase after years of declines.
A US congressional committee has asked five drug makers for advice
on the measures they are taking to combat the counterfeiting and
diversion of prescription drugs.
Dr Reddy's Laboratories has developed a new class of therapeutic
that could make it the first pharmaceutical company in India to
develop a proprietary blockbuster product.
MorphoSys has entered into a cross-licensing deal with fellow
German company Bayer Healthcare for technologies used in the
development and production of antibody-based drugs.
Applied Biosystems has launched a new product, based on the
combination of a new set of reagents with a software package, that
promises to speed up genotyping studies carried out on the firm's
3730 and 3730xl analysers, first...
Affymetrix and liquid-handling specialist Caliper Technologies -
now renamed Caliper Life Sciences - are collaborating on ways of
automating genomics research carried out using microarrays.
Switzerland's Roche is setting up an R&D centre in Shanghai in
a move which reflects the growing importance of the country as both
a market for pharmaceutical products and a site for drug research.
A survey has found that difficulties in swallowing pills is
widespread among adults, but is rarely discussed with doctors and
can prevent some people from taking their medicine. The findings
suggest that pharmaceutical companies should...
A recent trend in drug development has been the re-invigoration of
older pharmaceuticals by developing new versions based on just one
of the two optical isomers of the active compound, a process known
as racemic switching. But critics...
