Healthcare industry

Article - 24/03/2008

Successful cooperation between science and industry

At the recent Science meets Business Day four tandem teams of the German BioValley Platform presented their projects. These will be introduced in two articles. The first article focuses on natural substances with a pharmaceutical potential.

The paper by Lohmueller et al. 2008 shows that there is proportionally more deleterious genetic variation in European than in African populations. This revelation enables conclusions to be made on the group that emigrated from Africa several thousand years ago.

The biotechnology sector is growing and new companies have excellent opportunities to establish themselves on the market. Dr. Michael Steinwand explains what companies have to beware.

Nycomed and Cadila Healthcare have signed a letter agreement with the intent to amend their existing joint venture agreement to include the chemical production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) by the joint venture company Zydus Nycomed in India. Based on this agreement, Nycomed plans to transfer the current chemical production from the sites in Linz (Austria) and Singen (Germany) to the new joint venture within the next three to four…

Is there a slight chance that patients suffering from Retinitis pigmentosa or even from age-related macular degeneration might be able to regain their vision? A microchip implanted beneath the retina might at least give such patients the ability to make out the outlines of objects.

Vetter Pharma Fertigung GmbH Co has been granted approval by the American Food and Drug Administration FDA for the production of a new client drug. Vetter will now be filling injection systems with the new drug at its Ravensburg facility. Vetter has invested over 100 million euros.

Article - 16/03/2008

New indication for lead compound of Apogenix

Isolated tumour cells use to invade healthy brain tissue during the development and growth of glioblastoma multiforme GBM. This mechanism involves the CD95CD95L death system. These results supports the therapeutic potential of Apogenix APG101 for the treatment of glioblastomas.

Things that work on a small scale are not necessarily as successful on a large one. It takes a lot of patience and money to scale up analytical or therapeutic processes from the laboratory to industrial production. A new platform consisting of several building blocks minimises the costs.

Revenues of the Carl Zeiss Group in the 200607 tax year rose seven percent to EUR 2604 million. The Carl Zeiss Group generates approximately 83 per cent of its business outside Germany. Once again the strongest area was the semiconductor business.

Of twelve applications which qualified for the decisive final round of the top cluster competion two are from the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan area the Forum Organic Electronics cluster and the Cell-Based Molecular Medicine biotechnology cluster.

The Albstadt-Sigmaringen University of Applied Sciences has been successful in the states Innovative Projects Cooperative Projects 2007 programme. Two research projects will receive funding totalling almost 225000 euros.

Neurologists at the University Hospital of Mannheim are the central points of contact of the largest European stroke project to date. The European Union is providing more than 21 million euros over five years for research focusing on stroke.

If the environment is right and both sides are genuinely interested in working together then the cooperation between biologists and engineers will lead to top technologies. One example of such cooperations is the bioreactors of the Department of Cell Systems at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart.

The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering ISPE awarded Pfizer in Illertissen municipal district of Neu Ulm the Facility of the Year Award in the process innovation category for its fully-automated production plant.

The directors of the Tübingen Max Planck Institute MPI for Developmental Biology are pleased to have a Leibniz prizewinner in their ranks for the second year running. Dr. Elisa Izaurralde and her colleague Dr. Elena Conti have both been awarded the 2008 prize for their outstanding work in the field of RNA research.

Nils Johnssons work focuses on communication research involving living objects. The 48-year-old biochemist is investigating how proteins manage the complicated process of cytokinesis the division of the cell plasma. Thanks to a specific method Johnsson is able to detect when proteins are interacting with each other.

The Federal Ministry of Research and Education BMBF announced that the top cluster proposal Medical Technology and Health TuttlingenNeckar-Alb MedCare TechArea has qualified for the second round of the Top Cluster competition which is part of the governments high-tech strategy.

The major focus of the planned research initiative is precompetitive and application-oriented basic and initial research.

Christiane Pelzer and Ingrid Kassner biologists at the University of Constance recently discovered a previously unknown protein that plays a role in the binding of ubiquitin to target proteins. This discovery is a milestone in the research of basic enzymatic processes.

Heinz Schaller of the Centre for Molecular Biology at the University of Heidelberg ZMBH was awarded the Löffler Frosch Medal for his research on viral infections. He was co-founder of the biotechnology company Biogen.

Article - 09/03/2008

Successful attack on resistant tumour cells

In laboratory experiments Dr. Anja Apel from the University Hospital in Heidelberg proved that cancer cells that are resistant to radiation therapy can be made to become susceptible to this kind of treatment again by blocking the cells own recycling system.

The German Health Regions Network association was instituted on the 14th February 2008. The association acknowledges the growing importance of the health care industry and hopes to strengthen it with a particular focus on the project-related cooperation between the German health regions.

Since the 1st March 2008 the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at the University Hospital in Heidelberg has a new medical director Professor Dr. Hans-Ulrich Kauczor 45 succeeds Professor Dr. Günter Kauffmann.

Manfred Hönig paediatrist from Ulm University Childrens Hospital has received the Friedrich Linneweh Award for the promotion of young scientists in the field of paedriatrics. Hönig received the prize for his research on the development of immune cells.

Red biotechnology became commercially successful because process engineering succeeded in expressing foreign genes in microorganisms and got a grip on cells tissue cells were not only cultivated using technical methods but also purified for medical application on an industrial scale. However the biopharmaceutical industry is now facing rising costs.