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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

Investing in technology that's a few years from commercialisation can be tricky. Lori Valigra finds out how some venture capitalists sort the wheat from the chaff.

Two New Year's resolutions for the governments around the world that have managed to gum up the economic machinery behind technological development.

The European Commission's Clinical Trials Directive was meant to make trials more simple. But it looks as if the effect has been to stop many trials taking place at all.

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.

Cambridge University wants rights to the intellectual property generated by its staff. The idea has divided scientists in a university well known for its high-tech spin-outs.

A Swiss team has developed a reliable blood test for younger, live cows. Now it is looking for investment to develop a test for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

A British pharmaceutical distributor, Beckpharma Ltd., said it licensed two Cuban healthcare products to sell in Europe as part of a broader effort for trade links.

New regulations on the registration and testing of chemicals could have some problematic knock-on effects on European R&D – but they could also bring some lucrative work the way of contract research organisations.

Some strange new ways of raising money are starting to emerge - but would-be borrowers and lenders are still making sense of them.

It has been six years since a French biotech company made a stock market debut – and now two, BioAlliance and ExonHit, are doing so. Is the European market reawakening?

A new proposal from the European Investment Fund seeks to accelerate the success of European technology transfer projects. A noble idea, says Mary Lisbeth D'Amico in her fortnightly column, but no one has yet stepped up to foot the bill.