Nature Genetics papers find further links between pigmentation and skin cancer.

We look at the background to the massive international collaboration looking for genes associated with breast cancer, which published its landmark findings in the May 27 edition of Nature.

Hopes that a burst of high-flying IPOs would fan investor interest in biotechnology were dashed in Q2, as several companies -- including Acadia Pharmaceuticals and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals -- had to accept much lower prices than anticipated. Otherwise, it was an uneventful second quarter, and tools companies managed to maintain last year's hard-earned gains, adding 1 per cent to their index. Discovery companies, however, dipped 9 per cent.

Sequenom has blamed a saturation point in high-throughput genotyping for a first-quarter net loss of US$9.9 million, or $0.25 per share, compared to $8.5 million, or $0.22 per share in the same period of last year.

"'If Bill Gates can do it, why can't I?" The same question that has launched a thousand IT start-ups has seduced no shortage of scientific talent intent on proving their smarts in the boardroom as well as at the bench. But scientists with visions of dollar signs should note that few of them hold on to the reins of power for long.

IBM has launched a new business unit focused on information-based medicine in its life sciences division with the aim of helping customers integrate health-care data, including research, genetic tests, patient medical records, clinical trials records and medical images.

In a newly published study, scientists at Iceland's deCODE Genetics Genetics claim to have uncovered a link between schizophrenia and a known brain gene, neuregulin 1, and believe the research could result in "promising" new drug targets to treat the disease.

Icelandic company deCODE Genetics has updated the map of the human genome, estimated to give about five-fold greater resolution than the current draft.