The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.

Results of the first-ever clinical drug trial for children with Progeria, a rare, fatal "rapid-aging" disease, demonstrate the efficacy of a farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI), a drug originally developed to treat cancer. The clinical trial results, completed only six years after scientists identified the cause of Progeria, included significant improvements in weight gain, bone structure and, most importantly, the cardiovascular system,

Ten leading biopharmaceutical companies have formed a non-profit organization to accelerate the development of new medicines. Abbott, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Genentech a member of the Roche Group, and Sanofi launched TransCelerate BioPharma Inc.

Canada needs a national approach to managing its supply of pharmaceutical drugs, starting with a mandatory reporting system for drug shortages, argues an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) and CPJ (Canadian Pharmacists Journal).

Ministers of Health from 194 countries at the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly endorsed a landmark Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a roadmap to prevent millions of deaths by 2020 through more equitable access to existing vaccines for people in all communities.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is accepting applications for Round 9 of its Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, a USD$100 million grant initiative encouraging innovation in global health and development research. Anyone - students, scientists, entrepreneurs - with a transformative idea is invited to submit an easy, online, two-page application.

Increasingly, big pharma is viewing the outsourcing of pharmaceutical manufacturing as a strategic move that would enable them to focus on their core competencies such as R&D. At the same time, the patent expiry of key blockbuster drugs worth $45 billion and biologics worth $30 billion is expected to reduce the capacity utilisation rates of their manufacturing facilities,