A pre-designed biomanufacturing facility with advance planning permission is the latest carrot devised by the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) Ireland in its efforts to attract international biopharmaceutical manufacturing projects.

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.

Venture capital firms used to moan that business angels were unprofessional and hard to work with. But Europe's new breed of angel investor networks appears anything but that, says Mary Lisbeth D'Amico

The annual growth of biotech cultivation grew last year at its slowest pace since 1996, when biotech crops were first commercialised, according to a report by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, a non-profit group that advocates the use of bio-crops.