News

If your business isn't in a technology cluster, you have every reason to feel an outsider.

Everyone sees MIT as a role model, especially the British government. But there are other successful exploiters of academic R&D.

Europe's aversion to GM crops has killed investors' appetites for agricultural research. Even in the UK, historically a world leader in this field, it is almost impossible to commercialise agricultural biotechnology of any kind.

Chameleon BioSurfaces, a spin-out from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, is looking for £500,000 in funding to develop a new form of polymer coating for drug eluting stents.

Retina Implant AG has developed an electronic chip that is implanted in the eye under the retina and could restore partial vision for the blind – and is now looking for funding from investors to take the product to the market next year.

Business angels in German-speaking countries have traditionally been shy about what they do. Mary Lisbeth D'Amico watches them come out of hiding.

Six volunteers are in intensive care after a U.K. trial of an antibody treatment for leukaemia went horribly wrong, raising a raft of questions about drug testing.

Battle lines are drawn in an expensive, distracting and unedifying legal fight between two vaccine manufacturers. Nuala Moran investigates.

The competition to lure biotech investors and know-how is heating up in US states - and so are the legal battles between over fair and unfair incentives.

Tectonic shifts in the patent landscape could follow on from high-profile lawsuits challenging what can be protected by a patent and how patents are enforced that are due to be heard by the US Supreme Court this month.