NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., has named 13 new recipients of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. A key component of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, the Pioneer Award supports exceptionally creative scientists who take innovative approaches to major challenges in biomedical research. The award gives recipients the intellectual freedom to pursue groundbreaking new research directions that could have significant impact if successful but that, due to their novelty or other factors, also have inherently high risks of failure. Read the press release.

BioStorage Technologies, a provider of biomaterials storage, inventory management, and cold chain logistics, announced the launch of a new Internet-based system that offers clients real-time sample logistics tracking and management. This proprietary software application, called Web ISISS (Intelligent Specimen Inventory Storage System), enables BST's clients to monitor sample status and activity, view audit trails and documentation, schedule shipments and run reports on biological materials stored in BioStorage Technologies' (BST) facilities. This functionality is available from any PC with an Internet connection. Read the press release.

The NIH announced Sept. 29 that it has awarded the Stanford University School of Medicine a grant of $18.8 million to develop a National Center for Biomedical Ontology along with several other collaborating institutions. The goal of the center is to design and implement a new generation of computer systems that will enable researchers to share, compare and analyze data gathered from large biomedical experiments. The center will be led by Mark Musen, MD, PhD, professor of medicine (medical informatics), whose Stanford research group created Protégé, the most widely used ontology-development software in the world. Read the press release.

Ambion Inc., an Austin-based life sciences company that develops technologies for RNA analysis, and GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Co., today announced that they had entered into a license and supply agreement under which GE Healthcare will manufacture for Ambion microRNA (miRNA) microarrays utilizing GE Healthcare's CodeLink Bioarray technology. These microarrays, the mirVana miRNA Bioarrays, include a comprehensive panel of known human, mouse, and rat miRNAs as well as Ambion's proprietary, non-published microRNAs, Ambi-miRs. Read the press release.

Provid Pharmaceuticals Inc. announces the award of a $750,000 phase II SBIR contract by the National Cancer Institute. The NCI and Provid will collaborate on a number of oncology targets over the next two years. Provid will apply its hypothesis-driven drug discovery chemistry to translate the assay hits into viable drug candidate leads for applications in cancer therapy. These projects emerged from the efforts of the Developmental Therapeutics Program Screening Technologies Branch at NCI, where small molecule assay hits have been identified and are ready for medicinal chemistry validation and optimization. Website: www.providpharma.com.