A research team at Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital has developed and patented a technique for growing human embryonic stem (ES) cells without using animal-derived feeder cells.

Is the tendency to misfold and form aggregates of fibrils and gels the true nature of proteins? Graeme O'Neill reports.

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.

Life Therapeutics -- formerly known as Gradipore (ASX:GDP) -- today capped off its 200-day turnaround plan with a set of profit projections that culminated in a forecast overall profit for the company in 2006 of AUD$4.5 million.

Prion-like proteins may hold the key to understanding how the brain forms lasting memories, according to the Nobel prize-winning researcher from Columbia University Prof Eric Kandel, who is in Australia for the Australian Neuroscience Society conference in Melbourne this week.

There's an old capitalist saying that every dark cloud has a sterling silver lining -- the trick is converting it to cash. So when the cloud of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad-cow disease, descended on the North American cattle industry in late December, genomic tools companies sprang forth to help the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) trace the origin of the infected animal.

While the incidence of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) -- the human form of mad cow disease -- appears to have slowed in the UK after 146 confirmed cases since the epidemic began in the mid-1990's, a new wave of cases could be waiting in the wings, according to Australian neuroscientist Prof Colin Masters.

The story of the so-called prion diseases, including 'mad cow' disease, is one of the strangest in the annals of 20th century medical science -- and it grows stranger still.

Sydney-based biotechnology company Gradipore (ASX: GDP) announced today that it had demonstrated removal of both infectious and non-infectious prion proteins from human biological samples using its proprietary Gradiflow technology.

Starpharma has been granted a third broad US patent for its dendrimer technology, covering applications for anti-microbial and anti-parasitic compositions.

A 75 per cent boost in sales revenues at Sydney biological separations company Gradipore was offset by continued heavy commitments in R&D and international expansion in its half-year results, released today.