A research network to provide GPs and other primary health care practitioners with support, mentoring and workshops to develop their research ideas is being rolled out around New South Wales.

The Executive Director of ANSTO, Professor Helen Garnett, said the recent launch of the Bragg Institute celebrated the evolution of ANSTO over the past 50 years into a world leader in the application, research and development of nuclear-based science and other technologies.

Diagnostics company Panbio has reached into the senior ranks of DuPont for a growth-oriented chief executive officer to oversee its next period of planned expansion. [ + ]

Melbourne biomedical company Circadian Technologies has announced it will fund a project at Melbourne University to develop an antisense therapy for Alzheimer's disease. [ + ]

The controversial seven-month freeze on Federal government R&D Start grants has thawed and AusIndustry is bracing itself for a pent-up flood of fresh applications. [ + ]

Virax has announced the successful completion of its Phase I/IIa trial for its HIV immune-based therapeutic VIR201, with the last of 34 patients completing the six-month series of injections and blood tests. [ + ]

The race to launch the first commercial DNA test kit identifying cattle which carry a gene associated with meat tenderness has been won by Australian agbiotech Genetic Solutions. [ + ]

High-throughput screening techniques are being used in a unique approach to studying the molecular causes of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. [ + ]

Roses are red, and Melbourne biotech company Florigene wishes that violets were blue -- if they were, it would already have produced horticulture's most elusive prize: the world's first blue rose. [ + ]

A proposed US experiment to produce a mouse for testing the organ- or tissue-forming capacity capabilities of human embryonic stem cells should not proceed -- at least, not with totipotent human ES cells, according to a leading Australian stem cell expert. [ + ]

A scientific call for action to provide solutions for disease problems in developing countries was the topic of the Merck Sharp and Dohme Lecture at the opening of the first Australian Health and Medical Research Congress in Melbourne this week. [ + ]

Australia's IVF community is deeply sceptical of claims by Italian embryologist Severino Antinori that the first birth of a cloned human embryo will take place in early January. [ + ]

VRI BioMedical and Proteome Systems have signed a non-binding heads of agreement for a collaboration to develop some of VRI's diagnostic tests as point-of-care applications using Proteome Systems' proprietary diagnostic test platform. [ + ]

Melbourne-based Nextec BioSciences has established an incubator facility for aspiring and early-stage biotech companies. [ + ]

A device that allows doctors to safely take tissue samples from tumours has won a University of Melbourne student the Far Eastern Review Young Inventors Award.