Pharmaceutical companies continue to be heavily reliant on sales form their mature drugs, while investment in R&D and clinical trials for their successors has shown a marked decline. [ + ]

Melbourne-based Clinuvel has received a U.S patent acknowledging the role of so-called melanocortin drugs in providing UV protection for fair skinned people who have a genetic variation in the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R). [ + ]

Merck has stumped up $500,000 to fund a new research centre at the University of Sydney designed to help Australia benefit from U.S approaches to innovation. [ + ]

Price Waterhouse Coopers has released its quarterly Bioforum report showing that the Australian life sciences sector is outperforming the wider market despite a fairly slow start to the year. [ + ]

Melbourne Pathology will be the first Australian laboratory to acquire PREVI Isola, based on LBT Innovations MicroStreak technology for automated agar plate streaking in microbiology laboratories.

Abbott Laboratories is believed to be considering the sale of its flu business, gained earlier in the year through its acquisition of Belgium’s Solvay Pharmaceuticals. [ + ]

Swiss-based Novartis is expected to be the world’s best performing pharmaceutical company over the next five years, bolstered by its vaccine and generics businesses. [ + ]

Researchers at the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran have found that a single blood test may be used to accurately deterimine at what age women will reach the menopause.

A protein key to the development of placenta in pregnant lizards may open the door to a promising new branch of cancer research. [ + ]

California’s MP Biomedicals has acquired the assets of Auckland-based protein biologics manufacturing company ICPbio in deal estimated to be worth. [ + ]

Federal innovation minister Kim Carr has affirmed that the government will seek to have its new R&D Tax Credit apply retrospectively from July 1 this year. [ + ]

The tobacco industry's funding of genetic research could potentially be used to shift responsibility for cancer from smoking to an individual’s genetic make-up.

A multi-institutional team has recently sequenced the body louse genome with Dr Stephen Cameron from CSIRO Entomology researching the gene that is responsible for body lice responding to their environment.

Scitech has been appointed as distributor for electrophysiology company Scientifica.

In this section of the roundtable the panellists discussed the so-called 'valley of death' between a promising discovery and having a product that the industry will actually put money behind. [ + ]