Point-of-care testing is an emerging field within community medicine and will be discussed at this week's South Pacific Congress in Auckland.

Following a rancorous and polarising public debate last year, the creation of embryonic stem cell lines through somatic cell nuclear transfer will become legal in Australia on June 12.

The National Blood Authority has refreshed its IT infrastructure to cope with the increasing complexity of supply.

Denmark's Bavarian Nordic is actively seeking to be part of the consolidation process now underway in the international vaccine industry, and would not turn down a takeover offer if the price were right, company chairman Asgar Aamund said on Tuesday.

Western Australia's agriculture minister, Kim Chance, is taking what many are now seeing as an overly cautious stance on biotechnology. Graeme O'Neill reports.

Melbourne-based Biota Holdings (ASX:BTA) has entered into a licensing and collaboration agreement with US company MedImmune (Nasdaq:MEDI) to develop and commercialise Biota's small molecule compounds for the prevention and treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection.

Resonance Health Analysis Services (RHAS), a subsidiary of Perth-based Resonance Health (ASX:RHT), has been awarded a health supply contract from the government of Western Australia's department of health, for its FerriScan diagnostic test.

Melbourne-based Biota Holdings (ASX:BTA) has confirmed that three more countries have placed orders for Relenza, the anti-flu drug developed by Biota and commercialised by Britain's GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Australia's newest research institute, the AUD$100 million Bio21 Institute, based at the University of Melbourne, officially opened its doors today.

Western Australia's well-established record-linked healthcare database had been an important innovation for research, but had also helped to better awareness of privacy issues, according to Prof Fiona Stanley, director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth.

From R&D analysis and pathogen detection to clinical diagnosis and drug delivery, the biomedical applications of nanotechnology, while still in their infancy, are starting to yield real results.