Medicines to the value of 17.4 billion Norwegian kroners (NOK) were sold last year in Norway – the equivalent of 3, 700 kroner per inhabitant. The increase in 2007 was 3.4 percent compared to 2006. These figures come from the Wholesaler-based Drug Statistics maintained by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company Takeda is buying a local unit of Amgen Inc. The deal has been evaluated at $902 million. The deal will allow Takeda to obtain about a dozen of medicines for such diseases as cancer, arthritis and others.

Rice University bioengineers have reported an advance in tapping the immense potential of "hairy roots" as natural factories to produce medicines, food flavorings and other commercial products.

Dutch researcher Roelof Mol has investigated possibilities for more accurately determining the composition of medicines. He came up with a combination of two techniques that were previously considered to be incompatible: the separation technique electrokinetic chromatography (EKC) and the detection technique mass spectroscopy (MS).

Agencies worldwide are cracking down on counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and much of the focus has been on China, where an official was recently executed for approving fake medicines.