Astra Biotech GmbH, Berlin, Germany is a new company whose core focus is the development of innovative diagnostics for the identification of an individual's predisposition to disease. With this in mind, Astra Biotech GmbH have produced a significant portfolio of assays in areas such as genetically associated disorders, hormonal dysfunctions including fertility tests, allergies, and others.
Key targets so far are for osteoporosis, a condition which affects over 75 million people worldwide and thrombosis, a major fatal disease in developed countries. Other diagnostic kits include one for the determination of an individual's susceptibility or resistance to oral anticoagulants, predisposition to mental diseases as well as niche and infectious diseases.
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London-based Two Fold Software Limited has created a web reporting module which is seamlessly integrated into the company's innovative Qualoupe LIMS solution and runs on a concurrent licence basis. The new software application allows organisations such as contract laboratories or manufacturing companies to access and run LIMS reports on demand in a more cost-efficient way.

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World leading supplier of optical components, spectrophotometer cells and Certified Reference Materials for spectrophotometry, Starna Scientific, has introduced the Starna Optical Polishing Cloth (OPC) to assist laboratory technicians in maintaining the quality of the optical faces of a cuvette, without fear of scratching or damaging the surface.

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The Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology 2010 has been awarded to the Canadian scientist, Dr. Christopher Gregg, Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University for his research on maternal and paternal gene expression in the brain. His work focuses on genes that alter their expression in the brains of offspring according to whether they were inherited from the father versus the mother. Understanding the nature of parental effects on gene expression is potentially important for uncovering the basis of complex human neurological diseases such as autism and schizophrenia as well as eating disorders.

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This year's Nobel Prize in Medicine is unique in Nobel Prize history, being the first to be awarded in the area of reproduction. British scientist Robert G. Edwards receives the award for his pioneering achievements in human in vitro fertilization (IVF). Together with his colleague Dr Patrick Steptoe (deceased 1988), a gynaecologist, he developed the technique of fertilizing human oocytes outside the body before implantation in the womb. They were the pioneers for further developments such as Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), where a single sperm is microinjected directly into the oocyte.
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