Incoming budget head Günther Oettinger says the research programme will receive an extra €200M – and not €400M as proposed. Top universities say this is “peanuts” next to the €2.2B taken from Horizon 2020 to fund the Juncker Plan.

French researchers found evidence that Zika infection of glial cells in the developing brain is mediated by the Gas6-AXL pathway. They also noted that Gas6-AXL plays another role: activating kinase activity, which reduces the immune response and facilitates infection.

The PETA International Science Consortium Ltd. is accepting proposals that will demonstrate application of a VITROCELL® in vitro exposure system to reduce and replace the use of animals in inhalation testing (Deadline 30 March 2017). The award winner, who will be selected based on the proposal’s scientific merit and its potential to replace animal testing, will receive an exposure system from VITROCELL® (valued at up to $100,000).

Researchers from the CeMM Research Center of Molecular Medicine at the Austrian Academy of Sciences have discovered that artemisinins, an approved drug group against malaria, transfer glucagon-producing alpha cells of the pancreas in insulin-producing cells. In patients suffering from type 1 diabetes, these are cells are damaged. For their investigations the researchers used specific alpha cell lines.