The UK government is boosting efforts to build an integrated industrial biotech sector, announcing £12 million for demonstrator facilities.

The precarious position of the UK’s life sciences sector is underlined by fundraising failures among 295 of its members.

The Technische Universität Dortmund is to lead the launch of Europe’s largest PhD programme in the developing field of industrial biotechnology.

With the capital markets closed, partnering is currently the only way for development–stage biotechs to stay in business.

Cash-rich pharma is dropping any pretence they are buying cash-strapped biotech for access to innovative technology. What it wants is products. Let’s hope it doesn’t suffocate the feedstock of innovation in the process.

The credit crunch is strangling biotech. And with no access to capital, the only way out is to sell to big pharma.

As stock markets turn their backs on the high-risk sectors, France Biotech’s annual survey reveals the depths to which investment has fallen.

The pan-European biotech industry association has called for an end to the ten-year ban on genetically modified crop approvals.