Top Ten Innovations of the Year 2008 for Life Science, Biomedical and Pharmacological Research

The life sciences, biomedical and pharmacological research are moving fast. Across the world, new techniques and products are introduced from time to time to make the search for new knowledge and their applications feasible. At the end of year 2008, ten most outstanding new technologies or products have been picked by a panel of experts and lauded for their best innovative to biological and pharmaceutical research. These ten innovative items according to magnitude of their impact from the less to the biggest are: microfluidics; optical lock-in detection (OLID)-FRET, white laser confocal instrument, in-vivo multispectral imaging, PET/MRI combined imaging, in vivo cell cycle imaging, open source sequencing, zinc finger nuclease for gene editing platform, continuous focus microscopy and low cost sequencing. This article briefly reviews their principle and applications.