It may be a federal holiday, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth talking about in biotech! Here are a few stories to brighten your Friday morning…

TWITTERING FROM THE TRACTOR - CNN had a great piece yesterday on the use of smartphones and social networks by America’s farmers.

The growth of smartphones on farms is important because many people don’t think about where their food comes from, much less associate a specific farmer with that process, said Andy Kleinschmidt, a farmer and agricultural extension educator at Ohio State University.

“When you can put a name or personality with someone who’s actually raising corn and soybeans or actually milking cows, that’s the most important thing that’s come about in my opinion,” he said.

Thanks to @JPlovesCOTTON for bringing it to our attention!

MARYLAND BIOTECH - BOOM OR BUST? - You may have seen us tweet about this piece by Mary Spiro the other day, but we wanted to highlight it here as well, in case you missed it. Mary gives a thoughtful look at Maryland’s biotech sector and dissects the recent decision to break up the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) and the impact it will have.

BIOETHICISTS GONE WILD - Ok, well, not really. But they ARE, um, concerned. In fact, a group of more than 40 bioethicists, scientist, lawyers and science journal editors published a paper calling for an open discussion on guidelines for the future uses of stem cells - specifically the research and reproductive use of stem cell-derived eggs and sperm.

“Science has always moved faster than social debate or society’s ability to grapple with these issues,” says Debra Mathews, Ph.D., lead author of a paper published in the July issue of Cell Stem Cell and assistant director of science programs at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics…Mathews said stem cell researchers need to be better prepared to address public questions about uses of so-called pluripotent stem cell-derived gametes — regardless of how realistic or soon those uses may be. Such uses would potentially include reproductive uses such as the creation of sperm and eggs for in vitro fertilization, embryo selection based on genetic profile, and the creation of embryos from the tissues of fetuses, children and the deceased.

ARE ANTI-BIOTECH FORCES KILLING OUR FORESTS? - That’s pretty much the conclusion of a piece in Science Daily citing a story in Nature Biotechnology. It was a story that happily got extensive coverage online. (We encourage you to help that along by citing and reposting. The story talks about how extreme anti-biotech views are preventing us from planting trees that can help reforest areas and improve our environment. Our favorite quote:

“This is a noose that’s been slowly tightening for many years,” said Steven Strauss, a distinguished professor of forest biotechnology at OSU, and one of the world’s leaders in the application of genetic science to forestry.

“Everyone wants safe and responsible regulations that protect the environment,” Strauss said. “But some extreme opponents who see anything that is genetically modified as a mortal sin are successfully putting in place details that will make it virtually impossible to move ahead with genetic modification in forestry or woody energy crops.

“They don’t even want to see field research,” Strauss said, “which is required for analysis of ecological effects as well as benefits, and they have been making strides toward shutting the industry down.”

MOVE OVER SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA … ARIZONA IS COMING - Awhile back there were several stories out of San Diego about the city and its medical biotechnology community moving into the area of “clean technology.” Look out California. Arizona is coming armed with sunshine, Arizona State University, and some interesting funding. Read about it in Ryan Rondazzo’s piece in the Arizona Republic.

LE FUTUR EST MAGNIFIQUE - Reuters reported yesterday that some cash-strapped biotech companies in Europe are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Young drug discovery groups have struggled to raise funds during the financial crisis, but investors, analysts and industry insiders now see some signs of confidence creeping back into the sector.

“In the last two months we saw that a window kind of opened up and a lot of good companies with good assets were successfully able to raise money,” said Carmen Tang, a biotech fund manager at Pictet who oversees assets of $1.7 billion.

Biotechs around the world raised $5.9 billion in the year until June 4, up from $5.4 billion in the same period in 2008, data from specialist biotech publication BioWorld Insight showed…[MORE]

AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN - We came across this very thorough and interesting piece about the process of developing biotech wheat. The author, Jennifer Latzke, gives a great overview of the history and showcases the strong arguments in favor of continued development.

Wheat is behind the seed industry in developing a transgenic trait that will help growers or end users. Since those early days of biotech research, more competitive biotech crops have been encroaching on what was once traditional wheat acreage, Oades said, simply because they are more profitable or reliable for farmers to grow.

“As the biotech events have been introduced into more and more crops that compete with wheat, the planted acres devoted to them will continue to accelerate,” Oades said. “With our own biotech events available in wheat, we can turn the situation around and make wheat more competitive.”

Besides helping a farmer’s bottom line, biotech traits may also improve or sustain wheat production in areas affected by drought and disease…[MORE]

That’s it for us this week. But before you head off for your BBQ, don’t forget to submit your ideas for the Best American Biotech Innovations. We’ll be showcasing them on the site next week.

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

We’ve been very busy at IAmBiotech this week - between our “Best American Biotech Innovation” contest and preparing to head to Montreal for World Congress later this month. But we’re never too busy to keep up with the latest biotech news from across the blogosphere. So here we go…

H2O SMARTS - Monsanto’s Chandler Mazour wrote a guest post on Aguanomics this week about their new Water Utilization Learning Center:

The facility studies cropping systems comprised of world-class seed genetics, agronomic practices and biotech traits, including water-use efficiency technologies such as drought-tolerant cropping systems. At Gothenburg, Monsanto hopes to provide some insight on how crops can utilize water more efficiently…[MORE]

MAJOR PARTNERSHIP ON STEM CELLS - GE Healthcare and Geron announced this week that they’ll be teaming up to “develop and commercialize cellular assay products derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) for use in drug discovery, development and toxicity screening. The program will use stem cells derived from hESC lines listed on the NIH Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Registry.” In layman’s terms, they are partnering to “develop products that could give drug developers an early warning of whether new medicines are toxic.”

THE CHANGING FACE OF BIOBANKS - Genome Web had a great article about the changes in the biobanking system. It takes on a number of sticky ethical issues and argues that “biobanking is becoming a science in and of itself.”

Because biobanks not only collect and store specimens, but serve as a library of sorts for researchers wishing to work with these samples, they have many requirements. These repositories have always had a number of challenges, such as: ethical concerns, including informed consent; maintaining high-quality samples through good collection and handling techniques; syncing material information with donor clinical information; and maintaining patient privacy in the hands of researchers. Now, as demand from the systems biology community ramps up, biobanking practices are changing to deal with new hurdles…[MORE]

FIERCE 15 ANNOUNCED - Somehow we missed it earlier this week (mea culpa) but FierceBiotech announced it’s “Fierce 15″ list of the top up-and-coming biotech companies. Here’s an excerpt from John Carroll’s post about the list:

In truth, this year turned out to be remarkably easy to find star players. The weak developers are in survival mode, unable to attract new money and playing for time. With venture backers more selective, the cream was more readily visible at the top. And this year’s Fierce 15 help prove that if you have vision, good science and solid management, the money is still there to execute growth strategies.

This is our seventh annual Fierce 15 and the format is much the same as in previous years. I have added one new feature: A list of venture companies backing these emerging drug developers. VC money continues to be the primary source of sustenance for new ideas in biotechnology and I wanted to make sure that their role was better recognized.

SEE THE LIST

Today we bring you another interview from the 2009 Bio International Convention. We spoke with Michael Stevens, Chief Development Officer of ViroStatics, about why he started working in biotech and why he is so passionate about using biotechnology to treat debilitating diseases like breast cancer.

Enjoy your first roundup of July! And make sure to wish your Canadian friends a Happy Canada Day!

FOR WASHINGTON STATE, THE FUTURE IS BIOTECH – During a presentation at Seattle’s Biomedical Research Institute earlier this week, Rep. Jay Inslee (D) declared that over the coming decades, Washington State will be best known for “Boeing, Bytes and Biotech”. He spoke during a press conference to promote a new report that attempted to catalog all the various drug, device, and other biomedical technologies emerging in the state’s labs. According to the report, 119 new medicines developed in Washington labs are now being tested in clinical trials. This number includes 46 treatments for cancer alone. The full story was covered by Xconomy’s Eric Hal Schwartz.

Additionally, Scientists at the Research Institute announced that they’ve made progress toward developing a malaria vaccine using a weakened form of the malaria parasite. Dr. Stefan Kappe, lead researcher for the institute’s malaria program, said he has found a way to genetically engineer malaria-causing parasites and that his test vaccine has proved 100 percent effective in trials on rats and mice. Kappe said his lab will start testing the vaccine on human volunteers early next year. More details can be found at The Seattle Times.

BIOTECH CORN GETS THUMBS UP IN EUROPE - Yesterday, AFP reported that the European Food Safety Authority declared that Monsanto’s MON810 maize poses no risk to health or the environment. Specifically, the DNA modification that takes place in this strain of corn, which gives it its special insect-repellent quality, “does not raise any safety concern”, according to the EFSA’s GMO panel. This comes only a day after the announcement that a new research center from Britain’s Biotechnology Research Council (BBSRC) will decode the DNA of plants and animals used in agriculture in an effort to help farmers boost food production. The BBC outlined the specific goals of this groundbreaking project:

Research will focus on economically and socially important plants such as wheat and ryegrass. It’s also hoped that the work will lead to breeding of livestock better able to resist emerging diseases, such as Bluetongue.

Scientists at The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) also hope to help develop crops with increased tolerance to drought and new antibiotics to fight ’superbugs’.

The exact projects that TGAC will initially work on will be decided by an independent advisory board but there’s interest in creating sustainable biofuels and vegetables containing compounds that reduce the incidence of some cancers.

ALGAE FIELD OF DREAMS - Dow recently announced a partnership with Algenol Fuels to build and operate a 24-acre algae biorefinery demonstration farm that will produce ethanol at a target cost of $1 per gallon. The facility will be constructed at the Dow facility in Freeport, TX and will make ethanol that can be used as a base for the production of a variety of green chemicals as well as the development of certain bioplastics. Biofuels Digest covered the project in more detail:

Georgia Institute of Technology, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Membrane Technology & Research are partners in the project, which is targeting production of up to 140 gallons of algae fuel per day, or 51,000 gallons per year at a yield of 2,120 gallons per acre.

Last February, Biofields CEO Alejandro González Cimadevilla said that the company is targeting 2 billion gallons of ethanol from algae by 2020 using the Algenol process. The company said that it considered 15 other locations in Mauretania, Algeria, Spain, and the US, before settling on Sonora because of its 328 days of annual sunshine and 3.75 million annual tons of CO2 emitted by local power plant CFE.

ISRAEL BOOSTS FUNDS FOR BIOTECH INDUSTRY - Biotechnology is saving lives, and the world is taking notice. Israel’s industry, trade and finance ministries announced on Monday that the country is setting up a capital fund of up to 1 billion shekels ($255 million US) to finance biotechnology start-up companies. The full story was reported by Reuters.

Here’s your daily dose of biotech news for Tuesday.

ICELAND BIOTECH REGAINS FOOTING DESPITE COLLAPSING ECONOMY - News out of Iceland hasn’t been too hot lately (no pun intended). The economy there has been hit the hardest of any in this recession, culminating in a collapse of many of the nation’s largest banks last year. And to make matters worse, last week the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted that jobless rates would continue to increase. Despite all of this, deCODE Genetics, a biotechnology company based in Reykjavik, Iceland, has begun to recover from the chaos, today announcing it would be re-listed on the NASDAQ Global Market stock exchange after being bumped from it in February. Even in the worst example of a down economy, the biotech industry has the capacity to succeed. Nature.com reports:

deCODE is famous for its aggressive pursuit of DNA sequence variations linked to human disease, and aims to use this information to develop diagnostic tools and uncover new drug targets. Last October, its steadily declining stock price combined with a crashing market to drive the company’s market capitalization (a measure of a company’s worth, based on share price) below the $50 million minimum required to be listed on the NASDAQ Global Market stock exchange. [...] But the company has lived on (and continued to crank out high profile genome-wide association studies).

WISCONSIN JOINS OTHER STATES IN MAKING BIOTECH A PRIORITY IN ECONOMIC RECOVERY - A major part of the Governor’s new budget includes an initiative with the purpose of increasing R&D activities and biotechnology research in the state. In addition to calling for sales and use tax exemptions for manufacturing and biotechnology and creating an income tax credit for increasing research and development, the budget provides $8.2 million to support biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technologies research at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. The budget, aimed at stimulating growth, investment, and economic recovery, follows a number of other states who also see the gain in fostering biotech innovation in their states.

JGI ANNOUNCES 2010 COMMUNITY SEQUENCING PROJECTS - The US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute announced that it will support 71 new sequencing projects to advance its bio-energy and climate research programs. The programs will involve whole-genome sequencing, single cell sequencing, resequencing of bacteria, and metagenomics of microbial communities, JGI said. GenomeWeb reports:

“The information we generate from these projects promises to improve the clean, renewable energy pathways being developed now as well as lend researchers more insight into the global carbon cycle, options for bioremediation, and biogeochemical processes,” DOE JGI Director Eddy Rubin said in a statement today.

“In translating DNA sequence data into biology, we generate valuable science that improves our understanding of the complex processes that support life on the planet, or imperil it,” Rubin added.

STUDY HIGHLIGHTS AUTISM’S GENETIC COMPLEXITY - A new study comparing genetic samples of autistic and normal children has identified 27 different genetic regions where missing or extra copies of DNA segments may interfere with gene function and impair neurological development. The study was published in the latest issue of PloS Genetics. Modern Medicine reports:

Maja Bucan, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues compared genetic samples of 3,832 individuals from 912 families with children with autism spectrum disorders from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange with genetic samples from a control group of 1,070 children without autism.

The researchers found 27 different genetic regions with rare copy number variations (missing or extra copies of DNA segments) in the genes of children with autism, but not in the control group. The researchers also identified two previously unreported genes with variations, BZRAP1 and MDGA2, which are thought to regulate synaptic function and neurological development, respectively. The researchers note that the findings again highlight the large number of genes that apparently are involved in the development of autism.

Ever think that future of hydrogen automobiles would be found in chicken feathers?  Well, we’ve got that story and others in today’s biotech roundup of blogs and online news sources.

PATENT PROTECTION FALLOUT -  On Friday we reported on the White House’s letter to Rep. Henry Waxman (D. Ca.) saying that on developing a path toward biosimilars and that seven years “strikes the appropriate balance between innovation and competition.”  We’re not impartial on this as we work with and for those in the biotech industry.  Those following the debate — and everyone should given the impact that this could have on investment and development — should read Particia Von Arnum’s piece in PharmTech.  She strikes at the heart of the illogic of the premise that high costs of entry into the biologic field are reason to shorten patent protection:

Higher capital costs for producing biologics, limited technical expertise of suppliers in producing biologics, and a lower market return on biologics given the often more specific patient focus of a biopharmceutical are major reasons for the anticipated reduced entry of suppliers in the FOB market. How would limiting the length of patent exclusivity of the innovator-drug companies address these underlying fundamentals? Moreover, given the quality demands on any pharmaceutical product, particularly biologics with their more complex nature compared with small molecules, is it really desirable to create an FOB market that would encourage a multitude of suppliers?

BIOTECHNOLOGY AND CURES -  If you’re following how people are using biotechnology to find treatments and cures for deadly diseases there are couple of news reports worth reading.  First is Nicolas Wade’s article in the NYTimes on a new method of attacking cancer cells.   Then there’s the report in InSciences about protein biomarkers.  According to their report the development offers a method to detect and quantify multiple protein biomarkers in blood samples. Most important:

this method can be widely reproduced in different laboratories using varied equipment, a feat once considered largely impossible. The work was led by five research institutes, including the Broad Institute, as part of the National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer (CPTAC).

THANK GOD FOR THE ITALIANS AND BIOTECH AGRICULTURE? - We know there are a lot of people that feel a bit queasy over the pace of biotech agriculture.  But most of the poster children for virulent anti-biotech agriculture (aka GMOs) seem to call Europe their home — not the least of which is the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles.  So we rejoice in the review by GMOPundit of a new book titled:  “The Unexplored Potential of Organic-Biotech Production“.   The report is by Isabela Rosa and the Foreign Agriculture Service.  Our favorite line:  “In reality, the divide between organics and biotechnology is an artificial construction maintained by ideology rather than science.”  Finally.  Some who is getting it right.

THE “M” STATES ARE ROCKIN’ -  Last week we featured the biotechnology developments in Massachusetts.  Maryland isn’t sitting still.  Check out Gus Sentementes’ piece on Maryland biotechnology and the rush for $6 million in tax credits.

SUMMER CAMP, NOVARTIS STYLE - If you’re interested in how some biotech companies are approaching leadership and training, check out Novartis’ blog profiling this year’s BioCamp.  Coming the end of July in Cairo, Egypt.  Can’t make it to Cairo?  How about Texarkana, Texas?  That’s where Texas A&M is having its ExploreBiotechnology Camp July 6-10.

BIOTECH AGRICULTURE, HUNGER, AND THE VATICAN -  Amidst all the strum and drang about Food Inc. portrayal of biotech agriculture it is important to remember the hungry.  So take a quick read of a post in the Council for Biotechnology Information blog about food, hunger, and the Vatican.  Glad someone is talking about world hunger.

MINNESOTA BIOTECH, THE HORMEL INSTITUTE, AND SPAM -  There’s a fun story out of Rochester, Minnesota about the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, a collaboration between the state, Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota.  Add another ingredient:  The Hormel Institute.

The Hormel Institute is working to patent a ginger-based compound as an anti-cancer agent.  “We have several new compounds. We’re doing a lot of work with colon cancer, prevention of skin cancer. We have some anti-aging compounds,” Bode said. In addition, she said, the institute is also working on compounds for Hormel Foods “that they might be adding to their products.”  That triggered an audience member to ask, “So   we’re going to be seeing ginger-flavored Spam?”  “Probably not,” Bode said.

THE FUTURE OF HYDROGEN STORAGE IS BIOTECH AND KFC -  Researchers think they’ve found the answer to the nagging question of how to store all that hydrogen that will be needed for fuel cell vechicles.  The answer?  Chicken.  Well, chicken feathers to be exact.  According to Biotechnology 2050, “Researchers have discovered that carbonized chicken feathers could provide an inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to store hydrogen fuel for future motor vehicles.”