The European Medicines Agency wants industry's views on what makes an advanced therapy an 'advanced therapy.' It has issued for public consultation a reflection paper on the classification of advanced therapy medicinal products (30 April 2012).

The US FDA last week unveiled its comprehensive plan to update the applied science used in developing the tools, standards and approaches for assessing the safety, efficacy quality, and performance of FDA-regulated products, including prescription drugs.

It is now almost a year since new EU rules on the development, evaluation and approval of advanced therapies came into effect. Ian Schofield assesses progress so far and looks at which kinds of products are likely to be coming through the system over the next few years.

Celsis International, the UK life sciences products and laboratory services company, is to be acquired by the private equity company Nastor Investments for around 232.5 pence per share.