Belief that pharmacogenomics will transform drug development and medicine has been percolating for a few years. Recently, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) turned up the volume of its voice in the chorus of pharmacogenomics support with its report Personalised Medicine: The Emerging Pharmacogenomics Revolution.

Xceleron, a supplier of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), has reported results that suggest microdosing -- the administration of tiny doses of experimental drugs to humans to determine pharmacokinetics -- may prove useful in speeding drug development.

Jostling over pole position in embryonic stem cell research has reached new heights in the US, with one prominent scientist urging the state of Massachusetts to maintain its prestige in the field.

New chips, new terminology -- 'ecogenomics' -- and the latest installment of J Craig Venter's travelogue of discovery highlighted the opening day of the 16th International Genome Sequencing and Analysis Conference, being held in Washington, DC, last week.

The US National Institutes of Health has called for applications as it seeks to allocate US$7.4 million in 2005 to fund three new technology centres for networks and pathways.

Despite stepping away from the limelight of the Human Genome Project, in which he was a pioneer, Craig Venter can't help but make a splash.

IBM and Affymetrix have announced a joint effort to supply clinical genomics capabilities to medical research facilities and drugmakers.

International Data Corp (IDC), a leading provider of IT market data, has jumped into the life science market with the launch of Life Science Insights (LSI), a subsidiary focused on serving life science companies.

Sun Microsystems has abruptly withdrawn from the Interoperable Informatics Infrastructure Consortium (I3C) that it helped to found in 2001.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) broke the ground on Monday for the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, a planned 85,000 square state-of-the art research facility, which will become part of MIT's larger brain and cognitive sciences research project. Nobel laureate Phillip Sharp is the new institute's director.

Code jockeys, beware. Bioinformatics is a dead-end specialty soon to be subsumed by the rest of biology. Pay attention, Microsoft wannabes - and, perhaps, Microsoft itself.