Nuala Moran

The European Commission is reviving a push for a common patent policy by asking for input of ideas from industry and stakeholders - a move that would renew a fierce debate that has spanned more than three decades.

For some it was like a very bad Greek tragedy, for others a hoax more naive than the Piltdown man. But Hwang Wo-suk's fall from grace puts the UK on level terms with South Korea in the race to generate embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos.

The UK's stem cell community has reacted with collective dismay at the final confirmation that Hwang Woo-suk's claims to have generated patient-specific embryonic stem cell lines were fraudulent. Nuala Moran takes a look.

The countries of Scandinavia and the Baltic have got together to maximise the value of intellectual property, the feedstock of the knowledge economy.

Charges of scientific fraud in Korea aren't likely to faze Britain's ambitious stem-cell efforts, as evidenced by plans for a £40 million lab run by the 'father' of Dolly the sheep.

Just as most public research bodies embrace commercialisation as their raison d'etre, the UK Medical Research Council is reversing the trend and taking a company it span out earlier back within its fold.

The first investor-ready company has rolled off the production line in a scheme set up by the development agency Yorkshire Forward to commercialise research from the UK county's universities.

Scientists at Edinburgh University have developed a new method for cleaning surgical instruments that entirely removes protein contamination, including the near-indestructible prions - the agents that cause mad cow disease

With the US in regulatory limbo, Europe is winning the race to be the first regulated drugs market to approve generic copies of biotech drugs - despite the protests of the biotech pioneers who created them.

What are stem cells, what could they do - and why are investors wary of putting their money in them? A lay guide to the technology