In his first interview since taking up the job, Bruno van Pottelsberghe, the 37-year-old newly appointed chief economist at the European Patent Office, bemoans the failure to create a single EU-wide patent.

Micromet AG, a spin-off from the Institute for Immunology at Munich University, said it has agreed to grant four licenses of its single chain antibody technology to Abbott Laboratories, Alligator Bioscience AB, Haptogen Ltd. and an unnamed biopharmaceutical company, for the development of cancer treatments.

Lipoxen Plc, a drug spin-out company from the University of London's School of Pharmacy, said it has raised £3.78 million from a placing of 28 million shares for hiring news staff for preclinical trials to treat diabetes, Pneumococcal infections, and hepatitis C.