India rates highest in terms of cost-efficiency attractiveness among six prominent manufacturing locations including China, Singapore and eastern Europe, according to a study by Ernst & Young.

The BioIT Alliance (US) has appointed Dr Frank Brown, senior vice-president and chief science officer of Accelrys, to its board of directors. Formed in 2006, the BioIT Alliance is a group of organisations working together to accelerate drug discovery in the area of personalised medicines.

Dr Jan Hoflack has joined Oncodesign Biotechnology (France), a company focused on the identification of cancer therapies, as vice-president of drug discovery. Dr Hoflack was previously vice-president medicinal chemistry and biosciences at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical R&D in Belgium.

NeuroSearch and Janssen Pharmaceutica have agreed to develop and commercialise jointly new treatments for various central nervous system diseases, based on the companies' joint expertise in neuroscience.