Building the perfect cornea from scratch, the EU way
A team of European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) together with scientists have developed an artificial cornea that could allow blind people to see, and save patients from the serious drawbacks of the conventional transplant method currently in use. So far, surgeons have been transplanting corneas from human donors. These companies have teamed up with public research institutes to build the perfect, high-tech prosthetic cornea.
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New Biotech Alliance in Saxony to Secure Growth and Jobs
"Today marks the start of a new era for Saxony as a stronghold of biotechnology," declared Roland Göhde, the President of registered association biosaxony e.V. and CEO of Partec GmbH from Görlitz, speaking on the successful merger of the two organizations biodresden e.V. and biosaxony e.V. Players in the biotech and life sciences sector throughout Saxony (Germany) will now be uniting their activities within the new joint association. After the members of biodresden e.V. had unanimously backed the merger on June 4, the decision was finally approved by the membership of biosaxony e.V. on June 10 in Leipzig.
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Elsevier acquires Collexis
Elsevier, the leading global publisher of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, announced today the acquisition of assets from Collexis Holdings, Inc., a leading developer of semantic technology and knowledge discovery software.
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New tool to detect early-stage Alzheimer's disease
Researchers in Germany and the US have discovered that a new molecular imaging agent could be used to diagnose Alzheimer's disease (AD) during its early stages. Presented at the 57th annual meeting of the Society for Nuclear Medicine in Salt Lake City, US, the results of the clinical trial represent a possible breakthrough for the early detection of AD, an incurable degenerative disease that currently affects an estimated 26 million people worldwide.
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British Medical Journal: WHO must act now to restore its credibility, and Europe should legislate
Council of Europe condemns "unjustified scare" over swine flu Adrian O'Dowd
The Council of Europe has heavily criticised the World Health Organization, national governments, and EU agencies for their handling of the swine flu pandemic. The parliamentary assembly of the council - the international organisation that protects human rights and the rule of law in Europe - published a draft of a report that reviewed how the H1N1 pandemic was handled. National governments, WHO, and EU agencies had all been guilty of actions that led to a "waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public," says the report.
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Progress in Exploring New Avenues for Brain Repair
The research team led by Professor Magdalena Götz of Helmholtz Zentrum München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich reports a major step forward in discovering a therapy for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or stroke. The researchers were able to convert glial cells of the brain into two different functional classes of neurons. The findings are published on May 18th in the renowned journal PLoS Biology.
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Transinsight and antibodies-online Develop Software for Semantic Gene and Protein Identification
Since July 2009 Transinsight GmbH and antibodies-online GmbH partner together with TU Dresden and RESprotect GmbH to develop and deploy new semantic search technologies for the Life-Science industry. Their joint efforts are funded by the THESEUS research program from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi).
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