NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The US House of Representatives this week passed the Food and Drug Administration Reform Act, which would reauthorize the Medical Device User Fee Act and implement a number of medical device regulatory reforms, with strong bipartisan support.

Researchers have developed a "liquid biopsy" method to detect cancer cells in plasma.

The foundation this week announced that it is accepting applications for two postdoctoral training program schemes, both with a clinical research focus. [More.]

In the Journal of the National Cancer Institute this week: effect of ADAM28 on carcinoma cell metastasis, and more.

After 23andMe announced its Parkinson's disease-related patent, customers expressed concerns.

You'd need a very powerful microscope to read it, but a novel written in DNA is now a possibility.

Teaching, research, and service all compete for academics' time. Here, a blogger shares tips for managing the three.

In Nature this week: the tomato genome, three new colorectal cancer risk loci, and more.

Alan Alda stopped by the Colbert Report to talk about the World Science Festival, and his challenge to scientists.

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Affymetrix and Leica Microsystems today announced a deal to automate Affymetrix's QuantiGene View RNA ISH Tissue Assay on the Leica Bond RX staining platform for research applications.

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Pharmacogenomics firm AssureRx Health announced on Wednesday it has closed its Series C financing, raising $12.5 million.

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Clarient Diagnostic Services today said that it has licensed worldwide rights from Insight Genetics to intellectual property covering the anaplastic lymphoma kinase biomarker.

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Agendia said today it has raised $65 million in a private round of equity financing.

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Researchers from San Diego State University and the University of Arizona have taken a crack at characterizing the bacterial communities found in US city offices, i

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – SQI Diagnostics reported after the close of the market on Wednesday that it had a net loss of C$1.4 million (US$1.3 million) in its fiscal second quarter.

In another setback to its respiratory syncytial virus program, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals announced this week that its RSV therapeutic candidate ALN-RSV01 failed to meet the primary endpoint in a phase IIb trial.

Traversa Therapeutics has filed for bankruptcy after failing to secure the financing it needed to continue advancing its core RNAi delivery technology, Gene Silencing News has learned.

The National Institutes of Health this month awarded more than $1 million in research funding to support three grants focused on microRNA research.

RXi Pharmaceuticals this week announced that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the company's investigational new drug application to begin human testing of an RNAi-based drug for scar reduction.

Rosetta Genomics last week published data validating its miRview Mets 2 cancer of unknown primary origin diagnostic.

Title: Method to Quantify siRNAs, miRNAs, and Polymorphic miRNAs Patent Number: 8,187,815 Filed: Jan. 27, 2011 Lead Inventor: Ruoying Tan, Applied Biosystems

Santaris Pharma announced that President and CEO Soren Tulstrup has resigned from the company “to pursue other opportunities.” Santaris CFO Henrik Stage has been appointed interim CEO.

More genomic information on childhood cancers may mean faster advances in treatments.

Working the night shift may be detrimental to women's health, one study suggests.

In Cancer Discovery this week: MEK1 exon 3 mutations in V660E/KBRAF melanomas, and more.