Australia's largest cancer research agency, Melbourne's Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, is linking up with the National Information and Communications Technology Agency (NICTA) to develop adaptive software to sift huge datasets from microarray chips for patterns of gene activity distinctive to different cancers.

Just two days after the US National Institutes of Health launched a $100-million cancer genome pilot project, a group of prominent cancer scientists has proposed a related genome-wide project be launched that would map the myriad small chemical modifications to the genome.

A landmark publication by an international consortium of more than 200 scientists has produced a comprehensive catalogue of human genetic variation.

Affymetrix is to acquire ParAllele Bioscience for about US$120 million in a deal expected to close in the third quarter of the year.

A new Biomarker Discovery Laboratory was opened today at Australian Proteomics Analysis Facility (APAF) at Macquarie University, approximately ten years after scientists including Keith Williams and Marc Wilkins initiated the science now known as 'proteomics' on that very site.

Commercial DNA microarrays have received a strong endorsement for accuracy reproducibility of data, providing certain safeguards are met, according to a triad of newly published studies.

Shares in Swiss biotechnology company Serono have tumbled after the firm unexpectedly booked US$725 million to cover legal costs relating to an investigation into US sales of its Serostim AIDS drug.

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.

With considerable help from Affymetrix offshoot Perlegen Sciences, the International HapMap Consortium has announced it will build a more detailed map of human genomic variation than originally anticipated.

DNA chipmaker Affymetrix and the Harvard Medical School-Partners HealthCare Centre for Genetics and Genomics (HPCGG) have entered into a partnership to study the genetics of atherosclerosis.

The Burrill Biotech Select Index slipped 4.6 per cent in January, but Steve Burrill is bullish about 2005, despite the ramifications of the Merck-Vioxx situation spilling over into the biotech sector.