Big Pharma executives are searching desperately for a way of 'evergreening" the world's most lucrative drugs, the cholesterol-lowering statins, before they run out of patent protection in a few years time. [ + ]

Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, has earmarked AUD$36.4 million over four years for Australian collaborations. [ + ]

Stirling Products (ASX: STI) has reported that preliminary results from the trials of its lead product ST810 (R-salbutamol) in pigs indicate significantly higher potency than expected, with economic viability at the lowest dose tested. [ + ]

Select Vaccines (ASX: SLT) will acquire the remaining 35 per cent of its two subsidiaries Picoral and Hepgenics from the Burnet Institute. [ + ]

Acrux (ASX: ACR) has signed a second distribution agreement with CSL (ASX: CSL), giving CSL the rights to distribute Acrux's Fentanyl MDTS treatment for severe pain. [ + ]

US antiviral therapeutics developer Nucleonics has claimed first blood in its attempt to have the Australian patent office revoke a key RNA interference (RNAi) gene-silencing patent owned jointly by CSIRO and Brisbane gene-therapy company Benitec (ASX:BLT). [ + ]

A study by Macquarie University scientists will investigate antibiotic resistance genes in humans in an effort to combat worldwide death rates due to infectious diseases and reduce the growing burden on our health system by decreasing patients' length of stay.

The awards keep coming for X-ray crystallographer Prof Peter Colman, whose 3D elucidation of the influenza virus's neuraminidase enzyme in the 1980s helped build a firewall against the most dangerous virus on the planet. [ + ]

Dr Ralf Brandt's company VivoPharm has been in profit virtually since it opened for business 15 months ago in Bio Innovation SA's Thebarton biotech breeder precinct in Adelaide, despite a monthly mouse bill that ranges between $15,000 and $25,000. [ + ]

Three months after being forced to step down as CEO of Melbourne biotech Meditech (ASX:MTR) after a shareholder stoush, expat South African Chris Carter has been appointed CEO of Western Australian minerals-explorer-turned-biotech Acuron (ASX:AVP). [ + ]

National ICT Australia (NICTA), Australia's centre of excellence in Information and Communications Technology research, has announced an agreement with the Queensland government to set up, in partnership with Queensland Universities, a NICTA laboratory in the state.

Chronic hepatitis C patients at risk of liver failure, of cancer or the liver may take heart from a joint venture announced this week between Sydney company Life Therapeutics (formerly Gradipore) (ASX:GDP) -- and Italian blood-products company Kedrion, based in Naples. [ + ]

Veterinary drug developer Chemeq Ltd (ASX:CMQ) announced today it would reduce its staff by 15 per cent - 11 people - and delay its work towards entering the US market, because of the likely time and cost involved in securing independent regulatory approval from the powerful US Food and Drug Administration. [ + ]

Australian Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja has warned Australian stem cell researchers not to be complacent as the review on the 2002 cloning and stem cell legislation draws close. [ + ]

Stem cell researchers are gearing up for the reopening of the stem cell debate next year, when federal government legislation covering the use of spare IVF embryos and the moratorium on therapeutic cloning -- otherwise known as nuclear transfer -- comes up for review. [ + ]