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By Category: Biotechnology

What’s the Future of Synthetic Biology?

(MIT) Last July, scientists created the first “synthetic cell,” an organism that’s controlled by a chemically synthesized genome edited on a computer and stitched together in the lab. One year later, biologists at the Fifth Annual Synthetic Biology conference at Stanford University are still struggling to take the next step in the field. Holding them Read More »

June 21, 2011
| Filed under North America, Biotechnology, and Research
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Bacteria designed for sleuthing

HOMELAND SECURITY NEWSWIRE — Seven Cambridge University undergraduates spent the summer of 2009 genetically engineering bacteria to secrete a variety of colored pigments, visible to the naked eye; they designed standardized sequences of DNA, known as BioBricks, and inserted them into E. coli bacteria — so the bacteria can now change its color to red, Read More »

June 7, 2011
| Filed under North America, Biotechnology, and Research
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Emergent BioSolutions on Track to Complete Delivery of 14.5M Doses of BioThrax to the US Government Ahead of Schedule

BUSINESS WIRE (ROCKVILLE) — Emergent BioSolutions Inc. announced today that eight lots of BioThrax(R) (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed) have received regulatory release for delivery to the U.S. government under the company’s contract (200-2009-30162) originally written to supply 14.5 million doses of BioThrax to the Strategic National Stockpile. This marks the largest single-week regulatory release of product Read More »

June 2, 2011
| Filed under North America, Biotechnology, and Countermeasures
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U.S. Plans New Order of Anthrax Vaccine

The United States is preparing a deal with Maryland-based Emergent BioSolutions for the purchase over five years of 44.75 million additional anthrax vaccine doses, the firm announced on Thursday (see GSN, May 3). The company expects between July and September to conclude the new agreement, which would provide the additional doses of BioThrax for the Read More »

May 31, 2011
| Filed under Biotechnology and Countermeasures
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Industry, Academia Race to Create Drugs Against Biological Warfare

NATIONAL DEFENSE MAGAZINE — Experts tend to arrange biological threats in tiers. And anthrax may very well have an entire shelf to itself. After all, it was a series of deadly letters containing anthrax sent through the mail just weeks after 9/11 that spawned the biodefense industry as it exists today. On the heels of Read More »