New Zealand’s biotechnology industry wants the NZ government to establish a NZ$650-660 million, taxpayer-funded bridge between the nation’s research laboratories and its biotech business sector. [ + ]

One of the founders of Australia’s leading private wheat-breeding company has delivered a bleak prognosis for the commercial future of GM crops in Australia. [ + ]

Sleep apnoea and snoring device company Somnomed has closed its oversubscribed placement a week early, ahead of an expected float on August 27, 2004. [ + ]

The Victoria Prize was awarded today to Melbourne University physicist Prof Keith Nugent for his work on phase imaging and X-ray optics. [ + ]

If there’s money in muck, there’s also moolah in mania, according to molecular geneticist Dr Roland Toder, who built the Freiburg-based biotech company GeneScan Europe into the world’s leading gene-testing company for food and food ingredients. [ + ]

Biota (ASX: BTA) will relocate its US research operations to its new facilities in Melbourne in a bid to save costs. [ + ]

Chemeq (ASX: CMQ) has confirmed that its capital raising will include a placement of around AUD$10 million to institutions and sophisticated investors, as well as an underwritten rights offer of around $40 million to existing shareholders. [ + ]

Expressions of interest are being sought from Australian biotechnology companies interested in joining a trade mission to the United Kingdom and BioPartnering Europe 2004. [ + ]

Sydney-based proteomics pioneer Proteome Systems lodged a long-awaited prospectus for its initial public offering on the ASX with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission today. [ + ]

\Tissue Therapies (ASX: TIS) founder and chief scientist Dr Zee Upton has won the research scientist category for the Smart Women - Smart State awards in Queensland for her work in the area of wound healing and cell culture technologies. [ + ]

Prana Biotechnology’s (ASX:PBT, NASDAQ:PRAN ) new American CEO Jonas Alsenas began taking an interest in the company several years ago, when he felt the faint tremors of a paradigm shift in the Alzheimer’s disease research field. [ + ]

Australasia’s venture capital-starved biotechnology industries probably need a fairy godmother like Canada’s Foragen Technologies Management. [ + ]

The AUD$20 million flagship project of Tasmania's Intelligent Island initiative funded by the Australian Government and jointly managed with the state government -- the Tasinformatics Centre of Excellence at the University of Tasmania -- is due to get off the ground in the coming weeks, once final negotiations between the university and the state government have been completed. [ + ]

Chemeq (ASX: CMQ) has called a trading halt while it considers a proposal to raise equity funds to use as working capital and to expand its current production facility from 20 tonnes annual production capacity to 50 tonnes. [ + ]

Origin Capital, an unlisted pooled development fund set up by TSL Group's Ross Dobinson and Michael Naphtali, has raised AUD$6.5 million in private equity for investment into three biotech ventures. [ + ]