£50m government fund for access to new cancer drugs

29.07.10 Britain's coalition government plans to boost the sale and use of innovative cancer drugs in the British Health system. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said that, starting in October, an extra £50 million will be available cancer... more

Vernalis loses Parkinson compound

20.07.10 London - Vernalis and its US-partner Biogen Idec have halted the development of a drug for Parkinson's disease. Vipadenant, a novel adenosine A2A receptor antagonist and one of the main pipeline hopes of the British... more

Gene therapy booster

11.07.10 Sheffield – Neuroscientists from the University of Sheffield (UK) have optimised the efficacy of a gene therapy designed to heal the incurable disease spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Expression of an intact copy of a... more

Two-edged prognostic biomarker

09.07.10 Glasgow – Cancer cells can apparently switch their response to the tumour suppressor TGF-beta upon malignant transformation and make the cytokine act as a potent oncogene (J. Clin. Invest., doi: 10.1172/JCI136125). Together with... more

Ambitious British sequencing plans

03.07.10 London – The Wellcome Trust plans to sequence the genomes of 10,000 British patients over the next three years. The UK10K project is aimed at identifying rare gene variants underlying a variety of illnesses, including obesity and... more