Pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research releases a new white paper, "How Digital is Shaping the Future of Pharmaceutical Marketing". In this new complimentary report, Manhattan Research takes a broad look at the most important eHealth trends from their four U.S.-based physician and consumer studies.

EU-funded researchers have identified a human genetic variant that raises the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The findings add to our understanding of the factors behind the condition, and could lead to the development of new treatments. The study is published in the journal Nature Genetics.

A German research team has shown that ancient neural pathways in the human brainstem are involved in the 'placebo effect', the well known medical phenomenon that occurs when a patient feels less pain after being given what he or she thinks is a painkiller but is, in fact, a medically inactive substance.

The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Bayer Schering Pharma AG, Germany have signed a two-year research contract to study the mode of action of a Bayer Schering Pharma's preclinical cancer drugs. As part of this contract, VTT will use its new gene and cancer biology methods such as the 3D-cell culture model developed at VTT's Medical Biotechnology unit in Turku, Finland.

Approximately three out of four U.S. nurses recommend health websites to patients, according to the inaugural Taking the Pulse® Nurses v9.0 study from healthcare and pharmaceutical market research company Manhattan Research. The market research and advisory service focuses on which technologies nurses have adopted, how they are currently using them, and how they plan to use them in the future.

EU-funded scientists in Japan and the UK have shed new light on how stems cells develop into other types of cells. Their discovery that a protein called Nanog lies at the heart of a mechanism that gives stem cells their remarkable properties has important implications for the future use of stem cells in medical applications. The results are published in the journal Cell.

Transinsight's GoPubMed.com, the semantic search engine for the life sciences, has been recognized with the 2009 red dot: best of the best award in the category communication design - graphical user interfaces and interactive tool. A total of 6,112 submissions were received from 42 countries.