This Week’s Biotech Highlights

A contentious policy week on both sides of the border:

• In Canada, a meeting this week between the Canadian Association of University Teachers and Gary Goodyear, Canada’s Minister of Science and Technology descended into a shouting match over cuts to research funding announced in Canada’s 2009 federal budget.
• In the U.S., old controversies were stirred by the introduction of the Patent Reform Act of 2009(high-tech vs. biotech); by the Supreme Court’s ruling, in Wyeth v. Levine, that drug makers are not exempt from state tort liability (tort reform vs. plaintiffs’ bar); and by the nomination of Kathleen Sibelius to head HHS (pro-choice vs. pro-life).
• We even got a fresh cross-border controversy, with Obama’s call for the U.S. to allow importation of drugs from Canada.

Meanwhile, scientific progress refused to notice the controversies (or the recession):

• Several U.S. hospitals are taking steps to customize cancer treatment based on genetic profiling of tumors and have new tools to do it with; and
• Canadians were part of some amazing developments in making stem cells from adult tissue.

Read more about these developments, as well as the Monday Deal Review, the Wednesday Brain Dump and the Friday Science Review at the Cross-Border Biotech Blog.