VENTURE CAPITAL POST

The Congress is eyeing the passage of a medical bill before the end of the year. The bill, which is co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, seeks to streamline processes in the medical industry, with provisions on the counduct of medical research and clinical trials.

Amazon.com Inc is in a race against Google Inc to store data on human DNA, seeking both bragging rights in helping scientists make new medical discoveries and market share in a business that may be worth $1 billion a year by 2018.

One of the earliest tasks in President Barack Obama's $215 million "precision medicine" program will be finding a way to piece together data from a hodgepodge of existing studies, said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

First results from a human trial of an Ebola vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline show it is safe and generates an immune response, scientists said on Wednesday, but larger trials are needed to see if it protects and if a booster is needed.

A steep fall in Ebola cases in Liberia will make it hard to prove whether experimental vaccines work in a major clinical trial about to start in the country, the head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) said on Saturday.

Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) on Monday said it would buy worldwide commercial rights to NewLink Genetics Corp's (NLNK.O) experimental vaccine against the Ebola virus.

Wearable brain scanners and lasers that can turn hundreds of cells on and off were among 58 projects awarded $46 million in federal grants as part of President Obama's $100 million initiative to unlock the secrets of the human brain.