News from the John Innes Centre

PhD students Stuart King and Simon Lloyd, who won the UEA Eureka Business Plan competition, have returned from an internship at Hotel Chocolat’s base in St Lucia with a greater perspective on the world of business. They are now developing their business idea, based around protecting crops from disease. The prize also included start-up support, [...]

PBL is pleased to announce the acquisition of the assets of Chameleon Biosurfaces Limited by Biotectix LLC (Ann Arbor, Michigan).  PBL established Chameleon in 2003 together with the John Innes Centre (JIC) and founding scientists Prof Chris Pickett and Dr Saad Ibrahim, based on their pioneering electropolymer coating technology developed in the course of microbiological [...]

[Medicago Press Release] Medicago Inc, a Canadian Biotechnology company, is clinically trialling a vaccine to the H5N1 avian influenza virus, produced in part using innovations developed at the John Innes Centre.  Medicago is using virus-like particles (VLPs) in plants to produce the vaccine.  A protein expression system developed by Professor George Lomonossoff and Dr Frank [...]

The John Innes Centre is pleased to announce an exclusive commercial license agreement for technology that enhances the root systems of plants and with important implications for crop improvement. JIC’s technology management company Plant Bioscience Limited (PBL) is licensing the technology to Dow AgroSciences. Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company [...]

Quebec City, Canada and Norwich, UK, 12 August 2009 – Medicago, JIC (John Innes Centre) and PBL (Plant Bioscience Limited) announced today that Medicago’s outstanding achievement in producing the H1 VLP antigen in only 14 days, as revealed in the Canadian company’s press release on 30th June 2009, was achieved using among other technologies, a [...]

A new company has joined the fight against MRSA and cancer. Researchers at the John Innes Centre (Norwich) have launched a new company, Inspiralis Ltd, based around their expertise in DNA topoisomerases – a group of enzymes that help DNA molecules to unravel and wind up properly and not to become tangled during replication. “DNA [...]

A DNA-based therapy could slash the development time of new drugs to combat antibiotic resistant superbugs. Scientists from the John Innes Centre have proven that by taking a short stretch of DNA from a bacterium and delivering it with an existing antibiotic they can switch off antibiotic resistance. Together with technology transfer company PBL, the [...]

Courtesy of the Eastern Daily Press A team of Norwich scientists has invented a new type of wound dressing – made from peas. The scientists at the John Innes Centre were actually researching food packaging materials when they realised that one of their discoveries was more suited for another use. Now the starch-based film is [...]