Articles
The biotech report cards
As the new year begins, market analysts are sounding the same warnings that they did in 2002 -- that Australian biotechnology companies must consider strategies like mergers and acquisitions and alliances to survive. [ + ]
Quantitative analysis of small metal fragments by LA-ICP-MS
Small, irregularly shaped samples can present difficulties for the established methods of metal analysis. Laser-ablation ICP-MS offers accuracy and precision independent of sample form
[ + ]The future of drug delivery
The burgeoning area of drug delivery research could some day produce insulin pills for diabetics, laboratory-grown organs for transplants and plastic surgery, and an under-skin pharmacy on a microchip
[ + ]High-flying expat returns to give Monash the commercial edge
Roland Scollay has been an academic scientist, a commercial scientist, has held managerial positions in US biotechnology companies and most recently has been the CEO for a biotechnology start-up in the US. So it's a natural progression for him to return to the academic environment, this time to look for opportunities to commercialise academic research. [ + ]
Vacuum pump problems?
Are your vacuum pumps mysteriously breaking impellers, breaking or flogging keys, twisting shafts or prematurely trashing bearings? If so, the culprits could well be 'invisible' slugs of liquid and sludge
[ + ]Taxing moves in bioindustry
Australian bioindustry has a sweeping wish list of tax reform measures it desperately wants to see implemented. The trouble is, forcing through significant changes to the national tax structure has the same torturously long gestation period as developing a major new drug. [ + ]
INTERVIEW: The Andrews view: hang on for a big 2003
The biotech shake-up will intensify in 2003 but the horizon looks inviting on the far side of the wave of mergers expected to roll through the sector over the next 12 to 24 months. That's the view of Prof Peter Andrews, a leading member of the generation which has dramatically reshaped Australian bioscience in the last 15 years and a man who boasts a good track record in sculpting positive environments for young biotechs. [ + ]
Data visualisation: See what you're doing?
The growing sophistication of data visualisation applications has been a boon for pharmaceutical and biotech researchers across the life and chemical sciences spectrum. Visualisation platforms help computational chemists to model molecules in drug discovery environments and genomic researchers to stitch useable information together from a confusing tangle of data held in different gene sequence databases. [ + ]
Commercialisation: When institutes go to market
Advances in techniques for growing neurons, stem cell research, genetics, proteomics and massively improved capabilities in imaging are opening up previously undreamed-of avenues to treat sufferers of everything from epilepsy, stroke, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, paralysis and psychosis. [ + ]
Commercialisation: Doing the hard-sell on research
Much to the chagrin of those actually at the coalface, the technical achievements of our leading scientific institutions and successful partnering with industry to bring them to market have long been tainted by the myth that not enough is being done and other countries are doing it better. [ + ]
Proteome analysis in days
A team of researchers at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed new instrumentation and a unique approach to obtain the most complete protein analysis of any organism to date
[ + ]Funding the festival
The land of the red 'roo is a long hop from just about everywhere else in the world, so travel costs loomed large in Dr Phil Batterham's analysis of the cost of staging the world's largest genefest in Melbourne next year. [ + ]
Raise your glasses to biotech
The future is hammering on the ancient oak doors of two of the world's oldest biotechnology industries, beer and winemaking, both citadels of tradition and conservatism. In Australia, the wine industry is wide awake, and cautiously surveying the landscape for longer-term opportunities emerging from gene technology. The Australian wine industry, which has transformed itself during the past 30 years with a slew of innovations in viticulture, and new winemaking technologies, is enjoying the first fruits of the gene technology revolution -- but is in no hurry to grow GM vines. [ + ]
Beating the bugs
There is a complex and ongoing battle between humans and insect pests, according to Dr Phil Batterham, a researcher in the University of Melbourne's Department of Genetics and the deputy director and program leader at the ARC-funded Centre for Environmental Stress and Adaptation Research. Many chemical and biological weapons have been devised to control and prevent insects from attacking crops, but insects are highly adaptive and sooner or later they evolve their way around every weapon that is used against them. [ + ]
INTERVIEW: A Graves future for the marsupial genome
The world now has detailed gene catalogues, maps and DNA sequences for two distantly related eutherian mammals: the mouse, Mus musculus, a rodent, and a large-brained African primate, Homo sapiens. Where to now? Prof Jenny Graves believes that, to achieve the maximum yield about the deep genetic history of the world's mammals, it should be a marsupial -- specifically, a kangaroo. [ + ]