A research report in the international journal Vaccine this month has confirmed the immunity-boosting potency of Prima Biomed's (ASX:PRR) novel DCtag adjuvant technology for veterinary vaccines.

Melbourne's Austin Research Institute (ARI) and vaccine developer Panvax have signed an agreement with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research to develop an experimental malaria vaccine.

AstraZeneca has agreed to extend the completion date for a validation study of Prima Biomed (ASX:PRR) subsidiary Arthron's anti-inflammatory Fc receptor target.

The privately funded Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) has awarded a grant of AUD$900,000 to Melbourne's St Vincent's Institute (SVI) to establish a rational drug discovery facility for cancer research.

Prima Biomed (ASX:PRR) and the Austin Research Institute (ARI) have reached an in principle agreement enabling Prima to gain full ownership of its four subsidiary companies, Oncomab, Panvax, Cancer Vac and Arthron.

The Victorian government has pledged $26.6 million in infrastructure funding to 17 independent medical research institutes in the state.

The executive director of the Austin Research Institute, Mark Hogarth, has resigned as a director of Prima Biomed (ASX:PRR). The company cited Hogarth's increased responsibilities at the ARI for his resignation.

Vaxine's Nikolai Petrovsky says peptide vaccines work well in highly inbred laboratory mice, but have consistently failed in clinical trials over the past two decades because humans are an outbred species.

Shakespeare's witches, in 'Macbeth', were concocting mischief, not some nostrum to ward off plague, but some of the things that imbue today's vaccines with immunogenic fizz would not have been misplaced among the eldritch ingredients in their cauldron.

A new survey of commercialisation activity in Australia's universities, medical research institutes and national research agencies shows they are lagging well behind their Canadian and US counterparts.

Immunologists at Melbourne's Austin Research Institute have made a major discovery about the functioning of the immune system, which could revolutionise vaccine development.