This week’s headlines include, top 25 biotech companies, breakthrough designation cheered by drug companies, drug maker fees under review, stem cell news, NIH believes in recycled drugs, and the 2013 biotech IPO phenomenon.

Cell Culture Dish Feature – Ask the Expert:

Our Next Session – You tell us and win a set of spray bottles for your lab!

This week it is time for you to share your ideas for Ask the Expert topics. We want to hear what you want to see covered in future Ask the Expert sessions. One winner will be chosen to win a set of spray bottles courtesy of Life Technologies.

Session starts Monday!

Cell Culture Events:

Introduction to Cell Culture – August 20-23, 2013

This 4-day cell culture workshop is designed for those with no or extensive cell culture experience. Topics include an introduction to cell and tissue culture, serum containing and serum-free media, adaptation to serum-free media, cell counting and viability staining, growth curve development, growth of suspension and adherent cells, transfection technologies, cryopreservation methods, cell cloning and primary culture.

Scheduled workshops take place in Baltimore, Maryland. All of our workshops can be conducted at your location if needed. If you have questions or want more specific course content please contact our website, www.biosciconcepts.com or call us at 410-752-4224.

Headlines:

“Top 25 Biotech Companies of 2013,” Genetic Engineering News

“Last year, GEN published a list of the top 25 biotech companies. So, who would make the list this year? Find out by checking out this updated list of 25 biotech companies ranked by their market capitalization for the latest quarter that they furnished figures on their numbers of outstanding shares. Overall, the past year has been mostly very good to biotechs where market cap is concerned, the result of a stock market surge that has not only lifted prices well into double-digits for most of the companies on the list, but also finally jumpstarted the market for initial public offerings after several years of spinning its wheels.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “New and Improved Cultureware is Designed with the Scientist in Mind”

“U.S. Drugmakers Cheer “Speed Lane” for Break Through Therapies,” Reuters

“A new regulatory pathway could shave years off the traditional drug approval process in the United States, according to some companies whose drugs have been given “breakthrough therapy” designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Speaking at a briefing in Washington to raise awareness of the drug review process, Dr. Jay Siegel, head of global regulatory affairs at Johnson & Johnson, said he expects two years to be knocked off the time it would typically take the FDA to review ibrutinib, the company’s experimental cancer drug.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “A New WAVE for the Future”

“Drugmaker Fees for FDA Review Would be Freed in U.S. House Bill,” Bloomberg Businessweek

“About $1 billion in annual fees that Pfizer Inc. (PFE:US), Medtronic Inc. (MDT:US) and other drug and device companies pay the U.S. to review new products would be exempt from federal budget cuts under a bipartisan bill proposed in Congress. Across-the-board budget cuts that began to take effect this year, known as sequestration, have kept the Food and Drug Administration from using all of the fees it collects. The bill introduced today in the House of Representatives shields that money and frees the FDA to put it toward product reviews.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Quality Testing for Single Use Assemblies – A Review of our Ask the Expert session”

“NIH Gambles on Recycled Drugs,” Nature

“On Monday, Stephen Strittmatter began recruiting for a clinical trial to test a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. The study is also part of a bigger test for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its fledgling translational research centre. Strittmatter’s team is one of nine that won funding last month from the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) in Bethesda, Maryland, to see whether abandoned drugs can be aimed at new targets. Strittmatter, a neuro­biologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, hopes that a failed cancer drug called saracatinib can block an enzyme implicated in Alzheimer’s.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Perfusion Bioreactors – With so much to offer they deserve a closer look”

“Retinas Made From Embryonic Stem Cells Implanted Into Mice for the First Time,” Fierce Biotech Research

“U.K. researchers have performed a successful retina transplant in blind mice using light-detecting cells grown from. embryonic stem cells. The team of scientists, from University College London’s Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, believe the transplant technique could be refined with human cells to eventually be used in clinical trials as a treatment for degenerative eye diseases.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “From Product Candidate to Product: The Road to Commercialization in Regenerative Medicine”

“The Biotech IPO Phenomenon of 2013: Enjoy it While it Lasts,” Xconomy

“The year is only half over, but one of the biggest biotech stories of 2013 is going to be the resurgence of the biotech IPO market. It’s a good news/bad news story, depending on where you stand, and how far you look out into the future.”

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Biologics Take Top Spots in Best Selling Drugs of 2012”

“Stem Cells Reprogrammed Using Chemicals Alone,” Nature

“Scientists have demonstrated a new way to reprogram adult tissue to become cells as versatile as embryonic stem cells — without the addition of extra genes that could increase the risk of dangerous mutations or cancer. Researchers have been striving to achieve this since 2006, when the creation of so-called induced pluripotent (iPS) cells was first reported.

If you like this story, please see our blog titled “Cell Line Authentication – A discussion on protecting research against cell line contamination”