The UK biotech sector has fallen victim to the mayhem in the capital markets. After a year of falling share prices, five quoted companies have put up “for sale” signs.

Thomas Geelhaar, Head of Chemicals R&D at Merck in Darmstadt, Germany, describes how the company scouts for technologies and interacts with universities.

ITI Life Sciences, Scotland’s publicly funded innovation group, is to invest a further £2 million in its programme to develop new drug discovery tools.

Europe’s fastest civil supercomputer, Jugene, was inaugurated by North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Jürgen Rüttgers at the Jülich Research Centre last week.

A record 156,000 patents were filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2007, up 4.7 per cent over the previous year.