As it begins Phase IIa clinical trials, Mesoblast is riding high: its share price is climbing, its market capitalisation is booming and all that promise seems to be coming good.

With AusBiotech 2007 being held in Brisbane next week, ALS takes its bi-annual survey of the state of the industry.

Pharma market to double in value but more needs to be spent on R&D and less on sales and marketing - PwC report.

Small changes in the drug discovery and development process can yield significant benefits in bringing new drugs to market, Merck Research Laboratories president Peter Kim told a recent conference.

G2 Therapies, a spin-off company from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, has signed a licensing agreement worth up to AUD$137 million with Denmark's Novo Nordisk to develop, manufacture and commercialise new anti-inflammatory therapies based on G2's C5a receptor antibodies.

In what could prove to be a landmark event in pharmacogenomic medicine, US firm Clinical Data has launched a phase III clinical trial for the depression drug vilazodone and will concurrently develop a diagnostic test.

Australian biotech stocks underperformed both the All Ordinaries and the Nasdaq Biotech Index in 2005, but the second half of the year was brighter with stocks gaining 23.2 per cent, according to the Intersuisse Biotechnology Index.

US venture capitalist Osagie Imasogie told AusBiotech 2005 that biotech companies need to get aggressive when it comes to finding opportunities.

Sydney-based Peptech (ASX:PTD) expects to boost its R&D spend in the next year, in the wake of a net profit of AUD$25.7 million for the year ended September 30.

Diabetes- and oncology-gene hunter ChemGenex Pharmaceuticals (ASX:CXS) now has solid evidence that a particular variant of the SEPS-1 gene, already identified as a trigger for Type 2 diabetes, is a strong risk factor for a broad range of chronic inflammatory disorders.

Dimerix Bioscience has closed a series A capital raising worth almost AUD$1 million, and has revealed plans to accelerate the development of its new compounds created by applying its technologies to novel G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) cluster targets.