The group will address the complete biomedical spectrum, from academic and government research to pharmaceutical R&D and clinical trials, to hospital systems and patient care.

NCI’s caBIG Seeks Third-Party Service Providers   The National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid program has issued a request for information “to gauge third-party interest in becoming a caBIG s

Incogen this week announced the second beta release of VIBE-Ed, an educational version of its VIBE (Visual Integrated Bioinformatics Environment) platform.

In addition, the firm, which doesn’t currently offer a platform for high-content, image-based screening, is nonetheless keeping a close eye on the space, and “evaluating possibilities,” according to one company executive.

Arena Pharmaceuticals has been awarded US Patent No.

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At UBS, a Thermo official updated investors on the company’s impending acquisition of Fisher; Invitrogen’s CEO talked about the firm’s emerging instrument offerings; Millipore’s chief discussed the pending acquisition of Serologicals; while a senior Agilent official said that cellular analysis was not on the company’s radar screen.

Germany's Merck KGaA to Use Cenix's RNAi Service to Screen for Drugs   Cenix BioScience this week said German drug maker Merck KGaA will use Cenix’s RNAi screening services in its target-discovery and -validation effort

A team of researchers has developed a new way of representing chemical genomic data that could prove to be an effective tool for drug discovery.

Cross-species meta-analysis tool for high-throughput genomic research. Start date: Aug. 10, 2006. Expires: Feb. 9, 2007. Amount: $157,299. Principal investigator: Saeid Akhtari. Institution: Nextbio. NIH institute: NIGMS.

Shawn Handran is the new director of imaging for Molecular Devices, CBA News learned this week.   Handran was previously product manager for the IonWorks product line at Molecular Devices.

A number of new products were introduced at the Society for Biomolecular Sciences annual conference in Seattle last week.

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While the pharmaceutical industry is traditionally stingy when it comes to sharing information with potential competitors, the consensus among participants was that pharma increasingly views IT as a pre-competitive technology, and that the best way to overcome some of these hurdles may be by facing them together.

Accelrys has appointed Frank Brown as its chief science officer. Brown spent 20 years at Johnson & Johnson, where he mostly served as senior research fellow within the office of the chief information officer.

At an investor conference, CEO Keegan refused to assign specific blame, but conceded that the company may have to reassess certain product lines if lackluster sales continue.

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The awards were given as part of the Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer, a five-year, $104 million program started last year to assess the use of proteomic tools and data resources for cancer research.

At one of the life science and biotech industry’s largest conferences, heavy hitters of proteomics provided a healthy portrait for the sector.

Journal:Analytical Chemistry, Sept. 15   Title: Dynamic isoelectric focusing for proteomics   Authors: R. Montgomery; X. Jia; L.

Proteome Systems Inks Marketing Deal with DCN   Diagnostic Consulting Network will market and develop Proteome Systems’s PXL diagnostic platform, DiagnostIQ, and biomarker discovery expertise under a memorandum of under