With globally at least 30 million of cases per year, sepsis is a major health threat for which a specific adjunctive sepsis therapy beyond antimicrobial treatment, surgical source control and supportive intensive care measure is still missing.
Well, those bloody idiots in the UK managed to do it talk themselves from decades of hysteria about straight bananas (entirely fabricated by one B Johnson during his time as a journalist in Brussels) into actually voting to leave.
The European Patent Office (EPO) is currently pushing the project Early Certainty in order to speed up examination of patent applications. The aim is to complete examination within 12 months between request for examination and intent to grant the application or refusal.
Biologics have transformed treatment for life-threatening diseases and benefited millions of patients – but remain out of reach for too many other patients around the world. Ten years after the first biosimilar medicine was approved, competition from these products has driven increased access and healthcare system savings.
Plant breeding innovation is an impressive story to tell. A hundred and fifty years ago, Gregor Mendel discovered the basic principles of inheritance of traits. His laws were widely ignored and only in the 1920s, finally recognised as the fundament of population genetics. So it has only been a good 100 years that we have properly understood how to improve crops no longer randomly but in a targeted manner.
I am too depressed to write about the UK playing silly buggers with the EU and the negative impact on science, so let’s look at something positive for Europe instead – the development of circular economy opportunities for biotechnology.
People do plenty of moaning about the European Parliament, so lets look at something good that it did in October, when it rejected an EC proposal for national GMO bans.
European citizens are living longer than ever before and this trend is further continuing due to unprecedented medical advances and improved standards of living. By 2020, more than a quarter of Europeans will be over the age of 60.
A little bird tells me that the European Commission is moving towards a decision on whether various technologies involved in development of novel plant strains will fall under the terms of current GMO legislation.