Nuala Moran

The European Medicines Agency’s thumbs-down for rare disease treatment Glybera flies in the face of Commission policy. It’s also against the wishes of the European Parliament, and the impetus DG Sanco is putting into Orphan Drugs. Worse still, it’s bad for patients and kills innovation. By Nuala Moran.

In one of the first clinical applications of magnetic nanoparticles to reach the market, Endomagnetics has developed a technology that offers a safer, cheaper way to detect whether breast tumours have spread

The winner of the Science|Business Academic Enterprise (ACES) award for entrepreneurs under age 30 – presented at the Royal Academy of Science in Brussels in February – deploys ultra violet reflective powder and a scanner to determine just how clean are a pair of washed hands.

Policy makers have put innovation and the promotion of entrepreneurship at the heart of economic rejuvenation plans. But can start-ups seriously be expected to end unemployment overnight?

It can be difficult for technology start-ups to locate the support and finance needed to grow

A private equity firm is to raise the largest specialist fund in the world dedicated to commercialising university R&D. The money will be invested in partnership with three of the UK’s leading research universities

Hard-pressed healthcare systems can no longer pay premium prices for new drugs. The consequence will be less innovation in Europe says Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline.

The $1,000 genome has arrived, providing the spur for personalised healthcare to move from theory to practice. Some existing examples of best practice and roadmaps for the future are pointing the way

Personalised healthcare promises long-term value. But how can Europe justify the upfront costs at a time of massive cuts in public spending?

They are some of the largest spenders on research. But now, as pharmaceutical companies look to external collaboration and in-licensed products to fuel innovation, the internal R&D operation is having to justify the return on investment for the first time