Belfast company launches video based e-learning site for healthcare professionals in partnership with leading UK professional bodies. An innovative video based website that can help doctors, dentists and pharmacists polish up on their professional skills whenever and wherever they want has been launched by Northern Ireland based company, StreamOn.

A new, EU-funded project will investigate membrane proteins with the aim of finding new treatments for a range of diseases. Membrane proteins are responsible for transporting chemicals and messages between the inside and outside of cells, and they are vital for every process in the human body. Defective membrane proteins have been implicated in a range of human diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, epilepsy, depression, osteoporosis, stomach ulcers and cataracts.

The EU-funded project GenderBasic has developed a number of recommendations for the improved integration of sex and gender differences in health-related research. Scientists must be aware of these differences at all stages of their studies, from the research content itself to the processes and methods employed in clinical trials, says project coordinator, Dr Ineke Klinge of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.

Counterfeiting of medicinal products has become an increasing threat for patients, healthcare professionals and industry and a concern for EU and national policy-makers. The Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry is consulting all stakeholders and interested parties on key ideas for amending the regulatory framework for medicinal products in an effort to combat the counterfeiting of medicinal products.

In an important development, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has received approval from the U.S. State Department to establish eight full time permanent FDA positions at U.S. diplomatic posts in the People's Republic of China, pending authorization from the Chinese government.

A new EU-funded information and communication technology (ICT) project is tackling issues of safety in newly developed drugs. Over the next three and a half years, the ALERT ('Early detection of adverse drug events by integrative mining of clinical records and biomedical knowledge') project partners will work on an innovative computer system for a better and faster detection of adverse drug reactions (ADRs).

Tattooing is a more effective way of administering DNA vaccines than direct injection into muscle tissue, according to new research by German and Czech scientists. In DNA vaccination, a gene from a pathogen is injected directly into the host, which then produces the corresponding pathogen protein inside its own cells. This triggers a response from the host's immune system. Advantages of DNA vaccination include the fact that the vectors can be constructed quickly, and rapid and large scale vaccine production is much cheaper than for traditional vaccines.