A preliminary report by Australia's Productivity Commission has concluded that advances in medical science have benefited Australians, but have also been a major driver of increased spending on health. [ + ]

Keith Williams has stepped down from the helm of Proteome Systems (ASX:PXL), and the company has appointed strategic management specialist Stephen Porges as chief executive officer. [ + ]

Two Swiss drug developers have set out their stalls this month to test the market's remaining appetite for biotechnology IPOs, buoyed by the success of Swiss rivals and renewed investor interest in the battered drugs sector. [ + ]

A new program and online database developed in Victoria will offer laboratories all over the world a much better chance of avoiding false positives and false negatives when screening blood for viruses, particularly HIV and Hepatitis C. [ + ]

Drugmaker Allergan said quarterly net earnings fell slightly, and sales of Botox missed analyst forecasts, sending shares down 2 per cent. [ + ]

Human tissue is able to form new blood vessels throughout life. This mechanism, which is called angiogenesis, is essential notably in the case of myocardial infarction, stroke and limb ischemia. The very same mechanism, however, keeps tumors supplied with nutrients and oxygen thus enabling them to continue growing.

Cytopia (ASX:CYT) has received ethics approval to begin a Phase I clinical trial of its anti-cancer drug CYT997 at at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. The trial will be conducted in association with the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and Q-Pharm. Cytopia chief scientific officer Andrew Wilks said that the 30-patient trial would be a non-blinded, dose escalation study in patients with various cancers and could take between nine and twelve months. [ + ]

Having struck out in an attempt to broaden its shareholder base through a rights issue last month, Bresagen (ASX:BGN) will be asking shareholders to expand the range of investors who can subscribe to its back-up convertible note facility. [ + ]

Brisbane biotech Peplin (ASX:PEP) was celebrating some good news today, announcing that the pre-clinical results of the action of its lead anti-cancer compound PEP005 against leukaemia have been published in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology. [ + ]

The federal government has released a discussion paper on Australia's growing shortage of skilled professionals in science, engineering and technology (SET). [ + ]

Isotechnika has said a pivotal trial of its experimental drug, ISA247, to treat psoriasis showed positive preliminary results. [ + ]

Shares in Swiss biotechnology company Serono have tumbled after the firm unexpectedly booked US$725 million to cover legal costs relating to an investigation into US sales of its Serostim AIDS drug. [ + ]

In a rare example of cross-pollination, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Sydney have pooled the IP from three advanced research projects on inflammation and cancer, and spun out a new biomedical company, Medical Therapies. [ + ]

Heraeus Noblelight has acquired the Spectral Technologies division of US company IST Corporation. IST Spectral Technologies is a manufacturer of light sources for analytical instrumentation. The product range mainly consists of deuterium and hollow cathode lamps. The products of IST Spectral Technologies are not only used in science and industry, but also, for example, in space research.

In one of the funnier scenes in the movie comedy Yellowbeard, John Cleese's character, Blind Pew, asserts he has acute hearing -- to the bemusement of others, who, amid the hubbub of street noise, hear it as "a cute earring". If people with normal hearing have trouble filtering a clear message from the noisy medium, the problem is magnified enormously for the hearing-impaired. [ + ]