To no one's surprise, CSL has become the dominant force in the Australian biotechnology sector. Graeme O'Neill learns from CSL's chief scientist, Andrew Cuthbertson, about the solid research that will drive the company in the next few years.

The year 2006 will be a good one for biotech, according to San Francisco's bullish biotech maven, Steve Burrill.

Australia's biggest biotech, Melbourne's CSL (ASX:CSL) has signed a license and option agreement with Merck & Co, granting the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company certain rights and options to use CSL's Iscomatrix adjuvant in its pipeline of investigational vaccine products.

Results in Brief: Vertex, Varian, Watson, Chiron, Alcon, Eyetech, Elan, NicOx, MorphoSys, Actelion, AstraZeneca, Shire, GSK, Bristol-Myers Squibb, QLT, Millennium, Celgene, Invitrogen, InterMune, Charles River, Ranbaxy, Takeda, Sankyo, Daiichi, Solvay

Christine Cussen has resigned from her role as chief executive of drug re-engineering company Eiffel (ASX:EIF), at a time when the company's share price has dipped below $0.04 - more than two thirds below its level in January of around $0.12.

Brian McNamee has been at the helm of Australia's oldest - and now biggest - life-sciences company, CSL, for 15 years. He guided the company through its public listing in 1994 and has overseen its growth to a market capitalisation of $6.8 billion. He spoke with Melissa Trudinger about CSL's research and development programs, and his vision for the company's future.

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.

The US government has announced that Medicare will test the idea of paying for antiviral drugs -- including Biota and GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza -- for some patients who catch influenza.

Chiron has reported net income of US$23.5 million, or $0.12 for the third quarter, compared with a loss of $19 million, or $0.10 per share, in the same period of last year. The profitable quarter comes even though the company took a $91 million charge after its annual flu inventory was lost over contamination concerns that cut the US influenza vaccine supply almost in half.

After running out of influenza vaccines during last winter's major epidemic, the US confronts the prospect of an even more severe shortfall in the coming season.

Dr Lisa McIntyre, the head of LEK Consulting's Asia-Pacific life sciences practice, has joined the board of Sydney-based pooled development fund BioTech Capital (ASX:BTC).