Good morning! Let’s jump right into the biotech news of the day.

MONSANTO ANNOUNCES RECORD 11 PROJECT ADVANCEMENTS IN ANNUAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PIPELINE UPDATE – Farmers will have more resources to meet global agricultural challenges with Monsanto’s new project advancements.

The 11 project advancements in this year’s update is one more than the company’s all-time record. Products moving forward include SDA omega-3 soybeans; Genuity™ SmartStax™ refuge-in-a-bag; and Monsanto’s first insect-protected Roundup Ready 2 Yield® soybeans designed for the Brazilian market.

The first two of Monsanto’s seven High Impact Technologies (HIT) projects – Genuity™ SmartStax corn and Genuity™ Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans – have graduated from the pipeline and are expected to arrive at farmer’s fields this year through broad commercial launches.

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE LOOKING TO BUILD $41M STEM CELL FACILITY – The Buck Institute for Age Research plans to build a $41 million dollar building to conduct stem cell research, even if they don’t get any federal stimulus funding.

In May 2008, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine awarded the Buck Institute $20.5 million in seed money to construct a $41 million stem cell research facility. The California Institute was created to award grants and oversee research conducted with money generated by Proposition 71.

Due to the recession, however, the Buck Institute has been unable so far to raise the $20.5 million in matching funds it needs to proceed with construction. The Buck Institute is hoping to get a major piece of the cash it needs from the federal stimulus package.

UMBI LICENSES FULLY HUMAN THERAPEUTIC ANTIBODY PLATFORM TO PROLIAS – The University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Polias, a biotech company working to discover and develop therapeutic proteins and antibodies for disease treatment.

Joe Hernandez, Chairman of Prolias, stated “This acquisition gives Prolias access to a method of developing full human antibodies to the novel targets we have discovered via our existing FioNA technology. This provides us with the ability to discover new targets and develop antibodies to those targets in a seamless manner.”

The newly acquired technology, developed by Dr. George Lewis and colleagues at UMBI, provides Prolias with the means to generate fully human antibodies from naïve B cells in vitro. The technology has broad applications in therapeutics, diagnostics and laboratory research.

‘TRANSGENIC RICE WILL HIT FIELDS SOON’ – A rice variety that is tolerant to water stress conditions is undergoing field trials in India, with the hope that they’ll be available to farmers soon.

Head of the department of biotechnology, University of Kerala, G.M. Nair, who chaired the session, said the development of transgenic varieties that could withstand various kinds of adversity would make a sustainable green revolution possible in India.

BIOTECH DRUG APPROVALS SPIKED IN 2009 – FierceBiotech reports that of the 26 drugs approved by the FDA in 2009, seven were for biotech therapies. That compares to four biotech drugs in 2008, and two in 2007.

The Wall Street Journal asked Ira Loss, a senior health policy analyst at Washington Analysis, whether the spike represents a watershed of sorts for biotech drugs versus the small-molecule drug field. But he was a tad skeptical.

“I think it has the potential to be a breakout,” he responded, “but I am not prepared to say so based on one year. If there is a repeat performance in 2010 then I would be prepared to say the long awaited breakthrough in therapeutic biotech approvals may in fact be here. But not yet!”