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.

Pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research releases its latest consumer marketing research module, "Pharmaceutical Search Engine Marketing: Leveraging Online Health Searching to Fulfill Brand Goals", as part of its ePharma Consumer® market research and strategic advisory service.

EU-funded researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to protect healthy volunteers against malaria by infecting them with malaria parasites while treating them with the antimalarial drug chloroquine. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), raise hopes that it will soon be possible to develop an effective vaccine against the deadly disease.

Shire's ADHD treatment Vyvanse® owns the most popular product site among pediatricians, according to pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research. The finding comes from the recently released ePharma Physician® market research and strategic advisory service, which focuses on the digital resource and communication preferences and behaviors of physicians who interact with pharmaceutical, device, and biotech companies via the Internet and other technologies.