Legal Affairs

• Do Patents Control Self-Replicating Technologies?
  
• William L. Warren
• David E. Wigley, Ph.D.
• Patent infringement arises when one “makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells” a patented invention without authority from the patent holder. However, once the first authorized sale of the patented product has occurred, the patent holder’s rights with ... more »
  

Wall Street BioBeat

• New Study Shows Where to Start Your Start-Up
  
• Kevin Johnson, Ph.D.
• Colin Hailey
• In an era of payer austerity and funding challenges, more and more biotech entrepreneurs and investors, alike, are realizing the considerable risks associated with simultaneous development of multiple assets and instead opting for a more streamlined ... more »
  

Corporate Profiles

• Twin Effort Hones In on Membrane Proteins
  
• Carol Potera
• Two French companies are pooling their talents to offer comprehensive services for the isolation and production of target membrane proteins. Company officials say the two organizations work so closely together that they virtually emulate the activit ... more »
  

BioMarket Trends

• The Globalization of IVD Companies
  
• Winny Tan, Ph.D.
• In our most recent analysis, global in vitro diagnostics (IVD) sales revenue including reagents, consumables, instrumentation, and services totaled $46 billion in 2012 and are expected to reach $65 billion in 2017. Annual revenue growth for IVD is s ... more »
  

Insight & Intelligence™

• Is Brain Mapping Ready for Big Science?
  
• Patricia Fitzpatrick Dimond, Ph.D.
• President Barack Obama’s public-private initiative to create an activity map of the human brain will cost more than $3 billion, projections say, or $300 million annually for 10 years. The project has multiple private and public institutions lined up ... more »
  

Feature Articles

• Metabolomics Advances Reshape Dx Arena
  
• Kate Marusina, Ph.D.
• Metabolomics analyzes and quantifies all metabolites in a given biological sample. Powerful instrumentation along with sophisticated chemometric software allows for comparison of changes in thousands of chemical entities. Metabolomics is becoming ... more »
  

Tutorials

• Gene Expression Analysis in Living Cells
  
• Don Weldon
• Grace Johnston
• Detecting gene expression has traditionally been limited to technologies that examine expression in lysed or fixed cell populations. The ability to detect RNAs in individual, live cells can enable an unequivocal assessment of gene expression changes ... more »
  

Feature Articles

• Comparative Genomics: Insights into Disease Susceptibility
  
• Sridhar Nadamuni
• Comparative genomics is akin to comparing notes across different species. By comparing features at the genetic level—of completely sequenced (or nearly so) genomes—comparative sequence analyses facilitate the functional annotation of genomes and elu ... more »
  

• Exposing the Exposome
  
• Richard A. Stein, M.D., Ph.D.
• Understanding the interplay between genetic and environmental factors that shape phenotypes has represented, historically, a thought-provoking area for biomedical, medical, and social sciences. While the biology of the genome has witnessed unprece ... more »
  

Assay Tutorials

• Human iPSC-Derived Hepatocytes
  
• David A. Mann, Ph.D.
• Shannon Einhorn
• Kristin Block
• Peter Fuhrken, Ph.D.
• Christian Kannemeier, Ph.D.
• Jen Luebke-Wheeler, Ph.D.
• The liver is a complex organ composed primarily of hepatocytes, along with supporting vascular tissue and Kuppfer cells. It is responsible for normal metabolic functions and is also critical for the processing of xenobiotics taken in from the enviro ... more »
  

Feature Articles

• Critical Tools for Oligo Characterization
  
• Angelo DePalma, Ph.D.
• The emphasis on process understanding has been part of pharmaceutical development strategy since FDA’s 2003–2004 promulgation of GMPs for the 21st Century . Oligonucleotides were almost nonexistent in major pharmacopoeias at the time. Now that oligo ... more »
  

• Separation of Therapeutic Biomolecules
  
• Vicki Glaser
• Hydrophobic-interaction chromatography and reversed-phase chromatography (HIC/RPC) for large-scale separation of proteins was the focus of a series of talks at Tosoh Bioscience’s recent “HIC/RPC Bioseparation Conference: Advancements, Applications a ... more »
  

• Testing for Residual Host Cell Protein & DNA
  
• GEN recently interviewed Maura Kibbey, Ph.D., senior scientific liaison, biologics and biotechnology, U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention, on the topic of residual host-cell protein and DNA in biotech products. ... more »
  

Tutorials

• Biologically Relevant Laminins
  
• Karl Tryggvason, M.D., Ph.D.
• Researchers in the areas of regenerative medicine, basic biomedical research, and drug discovery all share a common need for reproducible procedures to culture human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) and/or differentiated cells. Some of the technical s ... more »
  

Feature Articles

• Biomarkers Take Center Stage
  
• Josh P. Roberts
• Biomarkers by definition indicate some state or process that generally occurs at a spatial or temporal distance from the marker itself, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that biomedicine has become infatuated with them: Where to find them, ... more »