The Challenge of Change - Managing Excipients Control
Colorcon
13-Apr-2004 - General Electric has completed its €8.1 billion acquisition of UK healthcare company Amersham, promising to create a new company that will 'change the face of healthcare,' according to GE chief executive Jeffrey Immelt.
13-Apr-2004 - The US Food and Drug Administration is planning to hold a meeting in June to re-examine its regulations on electronic records and signatures, used to generate the audit trail in the food and drug industries, to examine whether some elements are putting an unnecessary burden on industry.
13-Apr-2004 - Despite years of promises, there is still not a single product on the market that has been manufactured in a genetically-engineered organism. But a soon-to-be released market report maintains that the floodgates are about to open, driving an industry that could be worth $18.6 billion (€15.5bn) within 10 years.
07-Apr-2004 - Daiichi Pharmaceutical is to set up a new manufacturing subsidiary in a bid to profit from forthcoming Japanese legislation that makes it easier for firms to produce drugs for third parties.
06-Apr-2004 - Novo Nordisk has broken ground on a new manufacturing facility in Kalundborg, Denmark, that will produce liraglutide, a potential new product for treating type 2 diabetes.
05-Apr-2004 - Rhodia Pharma Solutions has completed a new extension to its production operation in Dudley, outside Newcastle, in the UK to strengthen its ability to provide custom manufacturing services to pharmaceutical companies.
05-Apr-2004 - US biotechnology company Genentech is planning to build a new large-scale mammalian cell culture manufacturing facility in California which will be the largest of its kind in the world.
05-Apr-2004 - Aventis has formally invited Novartis into merger talks as it fends off an unsolicited takeover bid from Sanofi-Synthelabo.
31-Mar-2004 - Drug companies are waking up to the notion that the environment a researcher works in - whether in drug discovery or the quality control lab - is a crucial factor in determining their productivity and creativity. And they have started to embrace new flexible workspaces that do away with the limitations of traditional buildings, reports Phil Taylor.
29-Mar-2004 - The European Commission has announced a collaborative tuberculosis research initiative, underpinned by €32 million in funding for two overlapping research projects aimed at developing an improved vaccine for the disease. The news came in the wake of World Tuberculosis Day on 24 March.
29-Mar-2004 - The pharmaceutical industry looks set to be one of the key areas of contention for the two US Presidential candidates as they square off ahead of the election in November.
25-Mar-2004 - The enlargement of the European Union to include 10 new countries has raised fears about the impact this could have on issues such as parallel imports and intellectual property protection, but it could reinvigorate the industry in the long-term.
25-Mar-2004 - Pharmaceutical major Johnson & Johnson has installed a new combined heat and power system at its research facility in La Jolla, US, that could bring cost savings of more than $1 million (€825,000) a year.
24-Mar-2004 - US-based biotechnology company Human Genome Sciences is planning to set up the first protein manufacturing facility in India in collaboration with local companies.
24-Mar-2004 - Switzerland's Novartis has confirmed that it is interested in joining with Aventis, but will not proceed with a formal bid unless the French government draws back from its hostile stance on a link-up, reports Phil Taylor.
24-Mar-2004 - Researchers in France and the US have used a technique known as click chemistry to discover potent new inhibitors of acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme that serves as a drug target in Alzheimer's disease, writes Phil Taylor.
23-Mar-2004 - Proposals to introduce a 'scientific visa' to facilitate movement of third country researchers to and within the EU have been adopted by the European Commission, writes Wai Lang Chu.
22-Mar-2004 - A new machine from Ultrasonic Scientific promises to revolutionise the analysis of chemical reactions by requiring only a tiny amount of sample, an important consideration when testing expensive biologic compounds.
22-Mar-2004 - A brand new chemical genomics facility, one of the first academic small molecule screening facilities in Europe, has been opened by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany, writes Wai Lang Chu.
22-Mar-2004 - Compared with European and US chemical companies, most domestic Chinese chemical enterprises have remained technologically challenged with productivity lagging behind international levels.
19-Mar-2004 - The pharmaceutical industry in the UK could face a recruitment crisis if more is not done to encourage students to opt for science and engineering courses, according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
18-Mar-2004 - The US Food and Drug Administration is to develop a blueprint for speeding up the approval of new medical products to counteract the slowdown in R&D productivity in the pharmaceutical industry.
18-Mar-2004 - Germany chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer has christened its chemicals spin-off Lanxess, and says it is on schedule for a stock market flotation early next year.
18-Mar-2004 - Fisher Scientific and Apogent Technologies are to merge in a $3.7 billion (€3.01bn) deal that will double Fisher's footprint in the high-growth life sciences equipment market, reports Phil Taylor.
18-Mar-2004 - The UK government has promised to protect the large funding increases for science announced in the country's last Spending Review and pledged more investment under a new 10-year strategy for science.