"It will also be important to find out if the technique can be successfully transferred to other clinical laboratories, " she said.

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The biggest question remains how quickly tests such as this will move from being essentially research tools to being real clinical tests that are conducted in commercial laboratories and are paid for by insurers.

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Two of its molecules had negative results in clinical trials, including one licenced to Forest Laboratories.

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According to Li, there are two other VEGF-targeted drugs in late-stage clinical trials: Neovastat, developed by Aeterna Laboratories (nasdaq: AELA - news - people ), and Thalomid, better known as thalidomide, which is being tested by Celgene (nyse: CELG - news - people ).

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In 2008, Phenomix scrapped plans to go public, and signed a deal with Forest Laboratories to jointly develop and sell its oral diabetes drug, already in late stage clinical trials.

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Two years ago, a panel rejected Xinlay, a prostate cancer drug from Abbott Laboratories, because the only evidence for its effectiveness came from after-the-fact analyses of two clinical trials.

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