Melbourne drug developer Phosphagenics (ASX:POH) has pulled a dozen-odd plump but otherwise healthy rabbits out of the hat after completing the first arm of a three-armed preclinical study of its anti-atherosclerosis drug candidate APA-01. [ + ]

Premier Peter Beattie has announced Queensland will commit $7 million towards a scale-up manufacturing facility to make drugs for pre-clinical and clinical trials. He said the funding would be used to encourage international and national investment. [ + ]

Melbourne is to be home to the world's first centre for medical bionics and hearing science, the brainchild of bionic-ear inventor Prof Graeme Clark. [ + ]

Agenix (OTC: AGXLY, ASX: AGX) subsidiary, Agen Biomedical has signed an agreement with diagnostics company Axis-Shield under which Axis-Shield will produce a new laboratory assay for deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. The Axis-Shield assay will use Agen's 3B6 D-dimer antibody, and will be incorporated into Abbott Laboratories' mmunodiagnostic analyser, AxSYM. [ + ]

Perth biotech Solbec Pharmaceuticals (ASX:SBP) has followed in the footsteps of small resources companies in setting up a $5 million facility known as a standby equity distribution agreement through US-based investment fund, Cornell Capital Partners. [ + ]

Mark Crowell -- a leading US technology-transfer expert -- has a message for Australian universities wanting to make money out of research: it is vital that the public sector continue funding good, basic science to drive the knowledge economy. [ + ]

A tissue engineering centre, a tumour tissue banking facility and a biopharmaceutical formulation facility are three of 17 projects that will share a total of $57 million in major infrastructure grants, announced today by the Victorian government. [ + ]

Researchers at the Diabetes Transplant Unit at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney have developed a new technique for extracting single human embryonic stem (ES) cells, bringing them one step closer to harnessing the therapeutic potential of stem cells. [ + ]

Although government and higher education R&D expenditure are on the up, and Australia generated almost 50 per cent more scientific and technical articles in 2003 than in 1999, the number of US patents granted to Australia has fallen, a government report has revealed. [ + ]

The NZ government looks likely to extend strict controls on xenotransplantation until at least December 2006 after a bill requiring trials of the technology to be approved by the minister had its first reading in the NZ parliament yesterday. [ + ]

Brisbane company Benitec (ASX:BLT) has signed a reciprocal licensing agreement with one of its biggest competitors in the RNAi field, US company Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. [ + ]

Western Australia's well-established record-linked healthcare database had been an important innovation for research, but had also helped to better awareness of privacy issues, according to Prof Fiona Stanley, director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth. [ + ]

Australian Cancer Technology (ASX:ACU) has announced a 1:3 non-renounceable entitlements issue, aiming to raise $5.7 million at $0.13 per share. Shares in the company were trading at $0.17 at time of writing. [ + ]

UTS Professor Ashley Craig is involved in a project in the NSW Premier's spinal chord injury (SCI) research program to develop an electrical stimulus to help quadriplegics cough.

When does a micronutrient become a contaminant? How much can our native species handle? Are the risks to human health fully understood? And what can we do to clean up our land and water?