Lentigen Corporation and Dharmacon Inc. announced a multi-year collaboration to develop and manufacture lentiviral expression reagents to deliver short hairpin RNA (shRNA) expression vectors into cells using RNA interference (RNAi) mediated gene silencing. shRNA is useful where long-term gene suppression is required, or where the cells are resistant to other delivery methods. Its use, however, has been limited by lack of design and processing methods that provide reliable and reproducible gene silencing. The goal of the collaboration is to overcome those obstacles and create commercially available, reliable, efficient lentiviral reagents for RNAi research. Read the press release.

A recent poll conducted by ClinPhone found that achieving comprehensive drug accountability documentation to ensure regulatory compliance is a major issue facing clinical trial sponsors. The opinion poll of 250 industry participants was conducted as part of ClinPhone’s recent webinar series, ‘Drug Accountability: Full Visibility through Electronic Management’. The results of ClinPhone’s poll highlight that the industry is increasingly focusing on the problem of maintaining accurate drug accountability management within a clinical trial. During the webinar, 28% of respondents identified that ensuring the provision of appropriate documentation meet regulatory requirements as the biggest issue facing them, and a further 26% pointed to the difficulties in consolidating site records, depot records and destruction certification. Read the press release.

Pharsight Corporation has entered into the largest single project workplan in its history integrating the services of drug-disease modeling, meta-data analysis and model visualization. The multi-quarter agreement, of nearly $900,000 in value, exemplifies the benefit delivered by combining Pharsight's Strategic Consulting Services (SCS) expertise and software tools such as Drug Model Explorer to address critical strategic portfolio prioritization decisions. Read the press release.

Caliper Life Sciences Inc. has unveiled the Xenogen IVIS Spectrum, the most flexible and advanced addition to the company's suite of in vivo imaging systems. According to the company, the IVIS Spectrum is the only in vivo optical imaging system that can perform high sensitivity bioluminescent imaging and advanced fluorescent imaging, including spectral unmixing, trans-illumination, and 3D tomographic capabilities. Read the press release.