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Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has formed a new company, Arradial, Inc., to commercialize its desktop silicon-based microarray assay technology. The technology is expected to have applications in genomics and drug discovery and is capable of performing over 100,000 nanoliter volume microassays per day with a miniaturized, software-driven robotic system. Arradial expects to close its seed round of venture capital financing in the fourth quarter of 2000.

Ambion, Inc. has launched Ambion RNA Diagnostics, a new division established to take Ambion's research products expertise and technology related to RNA and leverage this into the area of diagnostics.

AVAX Technologies, Inc. has introduced a tumor cell banking initiative, which will provide the commercial service of collecting and storing patients' own tumor cells for potential therapeutic use. AVAX will begin offering tumor cell banking to melanoma and ovarian cancer patients immediately and expects to expand the service to include other cancers in the future. AVAX Tumor Cell Banking will utilize the company's existing ICT System (Individualized Cell Therapy System), a proprietary method of processing procedures and protocols already being used in part to service multicenter U.S. clinical trials of the company's autologous cancer vaccines.

Investigators at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts have reported techniques whereby cheek swabs may become an inexpensive way to detect mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that are linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

The CDC has started population-based assessments, which the agency calls human genome epidemiology (HUGE). The aim of HUGE is to translate gene discoveries to disease prevention by integrating population-based data on gene-disease relationships and interventions. Additionally, it will be necessary to identify gene variations and other risk factors--such as lifestyle and environment--that may interact with genes.

Genome Therapeutics Corp. has sequenced two types of bacteria implicated in urinary tract infections Proteus mirabilis and Klebsiella pneumoniae.

A consortium of countries from around the world is poised to embark on a 10-year project to do for the world's animals, plants and microorganisms what the Human Genome Project did for the human body: build a roadmap. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) will take the great masses of information about the 1.8 billion identified species in the world that are stored in databases, libraries and museums around the world and link them. The effort will go online, giving people with Internet connections everywhere equal access to information about the creatures of the world. Twenty-eight countries will participate in and pay for the ambitious project, which is expected to cost about $80 million per year. A secretariat is slated to be established by March 2001.

Myriad Genetics, Inc. has been awarded United States patent number 6,090,578, by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the protein produced by the p16 tumor suppressor gene and antibodies against the p16 protein. This patent is Myriad's sixth covering aspects of the p16 (MTS1) gene, its protein, and their use in therapeutic and predictive medicine product development.

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