Briefs: Cyclacel closes Cambridge lab; 1Spatial helps redraw municipal boundaries
Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals Inc said it is closing its research facility in Cambridge, resulting in a loss of seven positions, as part of a revision of its operating plan that will now concentrate on the advancement of its lead drug, sapacitabine.
It will also maintain its core competency in drug discovery and cell cycle biology.
* * * *
1Spatial said it has helped the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner (LGBC) for Northern Ireland to cut the boundary definition time of its current review of all local government boundaries.
The system was originally developed for the Parliamentary Boundary Commission and was re-used by LGBC with some enhancements.
The system uses 1Spatial's technology to geo-code the 1.2 million records from the electoral roll, using Pointer (the standard address database for Northern Ireland). 1Spatial's system was able to automatically match 95% of these records and the remaining 60,000 records were geo-coded using a 1Spatial interactive tool. The entire process was completed within 3 weeks, delivering significant time-savings to LGBC.
* * * *
RMI Corporation, provider of high-performance processors for communication and media, has increased its partner alliance members to include CSR and SiGe Semiconductor. These new partners were selected to work with RMI to deliver a low cost GPS implementation in RMI's mPND reference solution, recently announced at IBC 2008 in Amsterdam.
* * * *
Cambridge Research Biochemicals, a specialist in the custom production of polyclonal antibodies, is expanding its antibody offering to include monoclonal antibody production via two new agreements with Babraham Bioscience Technologies (BBT) and Epitomics Inc.
CRCRB and Cambridge-based BBT have formed an alliance that will enable CRB to market custom monoclonal antibody projects from BBT.
The relationship with Epitomics that will enable CRB's rabbit polyclonal antibody projects to be transferred to Epitomics' rabbit monoclonal antibody projects. The resulting combined service will enable both commercial and non-commercial organisations to access the unique RabMAbs technology for research, diagnostics and therapeutics.
* * * *
A solution that will accelerate the speed of inspecting ePassports has been launched by security solutions specialist, Cryptomathic. The new technology addresses government concerns that the extended time taken to retrieve ePassport biometric data will result in long queues and delays at international border points, by eliminating the need to transfer data from the ePassport chip onto the border control system every time a traveller enters the country.