Features in 2001

Functional foods, nutraceuticals and plant-derived medicines may improve public relations for transgenic crop technology, but could leave manufacturers with tricky business decisions to make.

As the market for bioremediation using genetically modified microorganisms is eroded by controversy over the technology, transgenic plants may take center stage for environmental cleanup.

Advances in imaging are enabling researchers to track more accurately the localization of macromolecules in cells.

Carbohydrates play a wide range of important roles in the body and, despite the challenges posed by glycobiology, are now tempting targets for drug developers.

Despite initial teething problems, the number of clinically effective monoclonal antibodies is growing.

Many bioentrepreneurs incorrectly estimate the value of their technology by failing to account adequately for the cost, risk, and time inherent in product development.

Rapidly resolving the pharmacokinetic and toxicological properties of drug candidates remains a key challenge for drug developers.

Despite the advent of new science and technologies, drug developers will need to make radical changes in their operations if they are to remain competitive and innovative.

To what extent has microfluidics technology fulfilled life science researchers' expectations of creating a viable “lab-on-a-chip”?

Insights into the molecular regulators of controlled cell death—apoptosis—have provided researchers with new strategies for treating several common disorders.

Struggling for years within an unfavorable economic and political climate, the Italian biotechnology community is at last fighting back.

New biotechnology initiatives in Texas will lay the foundation for the growth and expansion of the industry in the southern state.

Estonia is using its genes as bait for foreign investment to support its embryonic biotechnology industry.

Israel's biotechnology industry is bottom heavy—big on ideas but, so far, not on accomplishments. It needs to get its investors and scientists to talk.

Singapore hopes to become the R&D and manufacturing hub for the East Asian biotechnology industry, but it may find that its past success in IT does not predict future success in biotechnology.

Once chilled by unfavorable economic policies, and depleted by a brain drain to the United States, Ontario is making a comeback in the business of biotechnology.

Nature Biotechnology's annual survey of public biotechnology highlights the defining feature of the year—the surge of interest in the sector that encouraged over 100 new companies to go public.

Biopharmaceuticals have provided a swift means of swelling pharmaceutical company pipelines, but they may not be such a fast “fix” for the industry in the future.

The regeneration of tissues and organs offers a radical new approach to the treatment of injury and disease. It's a new medicine for a new millennium, but does the reality match the hype?

With patents on several blockbuster therapeutic proteins soon to expire and several companies pondering whether to manufacture their own versions of these medicines, can a commercially viable business be based on biogenerics?