Profiles

Adelaide biotech Bionomics has presented the results of preclinical and clinical data for its anti-anxiety compound BNC210, demonstrating that the drug is more effective in treating stressed rats than the current market leader valium (Diazapem).

Troubled HIV drug developer Avexa may be poised for yet another coup after major shareholder Caldaza this week called for an extraordinary general meeting to discuss the future of the company

Testosterone booster Acrux this week stormed into the black for the first time, announcing a net profit of $46.6 million after earlier in the year signing one of the biggest ever multinational licensing deals for an Australian biotech.

Regenerative medicine specialists Mesoblast today reported a net loss of $14.8 million for the full year ended 30 June 2010, an increase on the previous year’s loss of $12.3 million.

It took nearly two decades to go from the release of the first semi-automated genome sequencer in the mid-1980s to the launch of Roche's flagship 454 FLX next generation sequencer in 2005. The 454 is now one of three major players in the next gen market whose impact on the world of genomics cannot be underestimated. Just five years later we are poised to embrace another new wave of sequencing technology.

Melbourne biotech Clinuvel announced today that it plans to conduct clinical trials of its UV protection drug Scenesse as a treatment for the skin pigmentation disorder vitiligo.

Regenerative medicine specialists Mesoblast announced this week that it has convened an extraordinary general meeting with shareholders to vote on the proposed acquisition of the company’s US partner Angioblast Systems.

Professor Philip Hogg, Director of the new Lowy Cancer Research Centre at the University of NSW, has received the prestigious 2010 Industry & Investment NSW Eureka Prize for Medical Research Translation.

Who would have thought that a staid structural part of the cell could be so treacherous in cancer, determining life or death? Maria Kavallaris at Children’s Cancer Institute Australia is using a mixture of proteomics and good old-fashioned biology to fight such treachery head-on.

The cotton bollworm, the world's most economically destructive insect pest, is having its genome sequenced.

While Friedreich’s ataxia is a rare disorder, tracking down the role of the protein implicated in the disease has opened up new therapeutic potentials.

The recent announcement of “the oldest mother ever discovered” made headlines around the world for Dr John Long and his colleagues, but Materpiscis Attenboroughi is just one of numerous finds Long has made at the Gogo Formation in WA over the last two decades.

A pocket of middle Australia on the northern outskirts of Perth is the setting for a proposed biobanking project that even its instigator, Professor Lyle Palmer of the University of Western Australia, calls “ludicrously ambitious”.

Epigenetics is moving from the laboratory to the clinic and the pharmacy, with several histone deacetylase inhibitors on the market and epigenetic screening likely to become as widespread as genetic screening.

Malcolm Walter has moved his collection of rocks from Macquarie University to the University of NSW, where he has joined Brett Neilan and his colleagues in an expanded multidisciplinary team as part of the new Australian Centre for Astrobiology (ACA).

They may have sneered at each other in the past, but collaborative efforts for translational research between academia and industry are happening, and they are working.

Professor Alan Cowman of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute will deliver the Rubbo Oration at this year's Australian Society of Microbiology (ASM) annual meeting, being held in Melbourne next week.

Physics and biology have come together to solve one of science's big issues - the structure of membrane proteins - through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science.