Company Announcements Abcam established direct service in Australia and New Zealand in August. In September, Abcam announced that Peter Keen will not seek reelection to its Board. Abcam entered into an exclusive license, supply and distribution agreement with Australia’s Children’s Cancer Institute for multidrug-resistance protein 4 inhibitors, Ceefourin 1 and Ceefourin 2. Nirmidas Biotech raised […]

Company Announcements As part of its 2014–17 medium-term management plan, Takara Bio announced fiscal 2017 sales targets for its Research Reagents business of ¥18,708 million ($184 million) and ¥2,681 million ($26 million) for its Scientific Instruments business to make up 74% and 11% of Bioindustry segment sales, respectively. GTCR completed its acquisition of Cole-Parmer (see […]

Germany’s federal and state governments will allot €25.3 billion ($31.6 billion) to special programs in research and higher education over the next six years. Most of it will be for universities. The federal government and states continue to provide about €20 billion to universities by 2020 to offset rising student numbers. The budgets of four […]

In 2013, national R&D spending grew 15.0% to CNY 1,184.7 billion ($193 billion). The proportion of R&D expenditures to GDP rose 0.1 percentage point to 2.1%. Spending on basic research, applied research and experimental development grew 11.3%, 9.2% and 16.0% to CNY 55.5 billion, CNY 126.9 billion and CNY 1,002.3 billion, respectively. Expenditures by “all […]

The Indian government will develop a policy to encourage domestic manufacture of basic chemicals, intermediates and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Past pharmaceutical production included manufacture of these products, particularly complex intermediates and APIs. But due to changes in policy and factors such as poor infrastructure and a lack of incentive for R&D, their manufacture has […]

A report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that many countries plan to maintain or increase their R&D budgets in upcoming years. However, because of public debt, projected to peak in 2015, the increases may be mainly from corporate investment. R&D investment is focused on climate-change mitigation; aging, health and food […]

By 2020, orphan-drugs sales are expected to total $176 billion, growing 10.5% annually from 2014, compared with 5.3% for the overall prescription drug market. Orphan drugs are forecast to account for 19% of prescription sales worldwide, excluding generics, up from 6.3% in 2000. In 2013, their sales totaled $90 billion, increasing 6.8% from 2012. Approval […]

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found low-level microbial contamination to be common in DNA-extraction kits. Contamination can affect results in some applications, such as deep sequencing of amplicons, in which microbial DNA can result in a competing signal. The researchers found when they extracted DNA from 10,000 or fewer cells of Salmonella bongori using […]

Thirteen of the 16 companies in the IBO Laboratory Sales Index reported quarterly earnings before this issue’s publication. Including estimates for companies yet to report, third quarter revenue for the Index grew more than 5% excluding currency, to $6,304 million. Excluding Illumina, Index sales advanced approximately 3% organically. Operating profit improved more than 10% to […]

Holliston, MA 10/1/14—Life sciences firm Harvard Bioscience has purchased German firm Multi Channel Systems MCS, a supplier of instruments for extracellular recording and stimulation, for €7.5 million ($9.5 million = €0.79 = $1) in cash. It also bought US-based Triangle BioSystems (TBSI), a provider of wireless neural-interface equipment for in vivo– neuroscience research, for $1.6 […]