Pharma giant Wyeth announced plans yesterday to eliminate research in half of its disease research areas. The company has not yet said what, if any, jobs will be cut in the process.

A handful of other pharmaceutical companies have recently narrowed their research focus in response to sluggish sales and the growing cost of drug development.

Wyeth in particular has suffered from the... Click to continue

The Web site of the student-run Harvard Health Policy Review is up and running after about a week of mysterious down time, and the journal's editor has apologized for running a controversial article without proper bias screening.

Rumors circulated last week when the Review Web site was down that Harvard authorities had censored the publication of the article, which addressed a long-standing debate about the total cost for... Click to continue

Local lawmakers in Bremen, Germany, are refusing to renew a prominent neuroscientist's license to conduct research on primates, despite the fact that his research was approved by a national regulatory body.

The University of Bremen researcher, Andreas Kreiter, works with 24 macaques to measure neuronal firing as part of his studies into cognition in the mammalian brain. During local elections last year, the regional parliament, in... Click to continue

Merck plans to eliminate 7,200 jobs by the end of 2011, according to their 2008 third quarter financial report, released today. The cuts are part of ongoing restructuring efforts and come after a 28% profit plunge in the third quarter.

The restructuring efforts began in 2005, and at the time the pharmaceutical company eliminated more than 10,000 jobs. The... Click to continue

A fungus that has eradicated more than 100 frog species across the globe has spread to an ecosystem in Panama that researchers hoped might hold out from infection a while longer.

"The findings are a concern because it means the fungus will continue to move through eastern Panama, and we only have a [limited time] to do what we can to save the frogs, collect data, watch," Karen Lips, herpetologist at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale,... Click to continue

The first clinical trial treatment based on embryonic stem cells may soon get the go ahead.

In May, the Food and Drug Administration placed a hold on a clinical trial application submitted by Geron Corporation, a California-based biotech. The company submitted a 22,500-page Investigational New Drug application to the FDA for an embryonic stem cell-derived compound -- called GRNOPC1 -- to treat spinal cord injury.

Geron president and... Click to continue

Iceland biotech deCODE Genetics is taking a hit from the global financial downswing. The company's stock price has plunged 54% since September to $0.45 a share.

According to NASDAQ's s regulations, companies must keep their share prices over $1. DeCODE dipped below $1 on September 10, and has 180 days to bounce back to maintain a NASDAQ listing. (The company's net worth, $27.88 million, puts it above the $5 million -- not $50 million, as... Click to continue

A diseased mammalian embryonic heart boosts its production of heart muscle cells to spur its own regeneration, according to a study appearing tomorrow in Developmental Cell.

"The mammalian heart has a phenomenal capacity to fix itself," Timothy Cox at the University of Washington, the study's lead author, told The Scientist,... Click to continue

Will BioMed Central, the publishing house that's been the flagship for open access for nearly a decade, be in good hands with Springer?

Yes, say some open access advocates, as long as the BioMed Central (BMC) publishing model is allowed to persevere. Indeed, the acquisition this week of BMC by Springer may send the signal to other commercial groups that open access works. "I think it's a good sign for open access," Heather Joseph,... Click to continue

A former member of a high profile stem cell biology research team at the University of Minnesota has been found guilty of falsifying data, a university investigatory panel has ruled.

Morayma Reyes, a former PhD student in the lab of prominent stem cell biologist Catherine Verfaillie, was under investigation by the university for fabricating data in a ... Click to continue

The world's largest open access publisher, BioMed Central, has been sold to Springer.

BioMed Central (a former sister company of The Scientist) publishes 180 peer-reviewed journals under the open access publishing model, meaning that anyone can read articles for free once they are published, and authors pay a per-page fee to publish in the journals.

There are no plans to change the journal publishing costs or fees, Matt McKay, director of public relations at BioMed Central, told The... Click to continue

Researchers in the UK should report more details than they currently do about how much their lab animals are suffering, according to recent recommendations by a UK working group. But one prominent pain researcher thinks such requirements are useless.

Last week, a working group made up of research scientists, veterinary surgeons, and animal care technicians, representing the Animal Procedures Committee and Lab Animals Science Association, released a report calling for more stringent reporting... Click to continue