In the biotechnology world, all eyes are on Boston and the BIO 2012 convention this week. But across the country, in San Francisco, the American Society for Microbiology is also having its annual meeting. And on Tuesday, a late-breaking session at that meeting reported the newest findings of the Human Microbiome Project.

One of the disappointments of targeted cancer therapies has been that their promise of low toxicity has not been borne out. At the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference earlier this month, Geoffrey Shapiro of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute told BioWorld Today that "alopecia" – hair loss – "and bone marrow toxicity have been replaced by diarrhea and rash" as the dose-limiting banes of therapeutic development.

Very rapid but not very specific, the innate branch of the immune system is that system's first responder. But if it doesn't work, the effects can last a lifetime.

Stem cells have high hopes riding on them as a possible treatment for ailments such as cardiovascular disease. But recent findings suggested that stem cells might be what are to blame for the onset of vascular disease in the first place.

Untreated HIV is a near-certain death sentence – but not quite a certain one. Roughly 1 in 300 HIV-infected individuals is able keep the virus in check without any medical treatment.

Co-developing a targeted therapeutic with a companion diagnostic can be crowned with spectacular success. But how early in development patients should be selected based on such a biomarker is a complex question. The story of Pfizer Inc.'s Xalkori (crizotinib) illustrates several of the issues that need to be considered during the development of such combinations.

The microbiome has garnered much attention in recent years for its role in health and disease. But that attention has been focused pretty much exclusively on bacteria.

As the pharmaceutical landscape goes, there are a fairly large number of treatment options for epilepsy. But there are also a fairly large number of patients for whom none of those options work. "A lot of patients with epilepsy are still not well treated," Gary Yellen told BioWorld Today.

CHICAGO – Roche AG subsidiary Genentech Inc. and partner ImmunoGen Inc. had what looks to be another winner at Sunday's plenary session of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting.

CHICAGO – On the last day of the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, the crowds had thinned enough so that the convention center staff no longer had an individual on duty in the East Hall whose sole task it was to exhort conventioneers to "stay right by order of the fire marshal."