LONDON - The FDA approval last week of Centocor Inc.'s monoclonal antibody Remicade (formerly Avakine) for the treatment of Crohn's disease is good news for U.K. company Celltech plc, on whose technology the product is based. The approval triggers a second license payment. With the launch of Remicade later this year, Slough-based Celltech will receive ongoing royalties on sales. The license covers Celltech's Boss patent for the production of genetically engineered antibodies. Royalty payments

LONDON - Prolifix Ltd., of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, which specializes in the discovery and development of small-molecule drugs that modulate the cell cycle, has entered a collaboration with combinatorial chemistry company Biofocus plc, of Sittingbourne, Kent. Under terms of the deal, Biofocus will optimize lead molecules for Prolifix's anticancer program. At the same time, Prolifix announced the appointment of Paul Finn to the new post of head of chemistry. Finn, who joins the company from New

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia - Determining the best antigen presentation to elicit a broad immune response in humans is an enormous challenge in preventing cancer, said Randal Chase, president and CEO of Pasteur Merieux Connaught Canada (PMCC). Chase spoke at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, where two research teams from the medical school there will study basic interactions between the immune system and cancer cells in an effort to uncover ways of stimulating an enhanced immune response against

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union (EU) attempts to update heavily criticized 1990 rules on biotech research have undergone another twist, with the appearance of a "re-examined proposal" from the European Commission. The latest version - a response to the views of the European Parliament (EP) - runs the risk of making more complex the debate over a new set of rules that originally were intended to be more streamlined, more industry-oriented and less bureaucratic. The EU directive 90/219 on

HAMBURG, Germany - German biotechnology company BioTuL Bio Instruments GmbH, of Munich, this week invited researchers and business experts to the First Conference on Kinomics: Molecular Recognition in Life Sciences. Speakers will discuss new technologies and instruments to recognize molecular interactions and measure biomolecular kinetics. During the conference, BioTuL will announce the winners of its Young Scientist Award for the most innovative research projects using the company's biosensor

LONDON - ReGen Therapeutics plc raised £2.1 million (US$3.5 million) from institutional and private investors to commercialize the Alzheimer's disease treatment Colostrinin, developed over the past 20 years at the Institute of Immunology at the Academy of Science in Wroclaw, Poland. The majority of the 5 million shares, offered at £0.50 each, have been taken up. The company is valued at around £16 million. From early this month the shares will be traded on OFEX, the unregulated trading

REHOVOT, Israel - XTL Biopharmaceuticals Ltd. completed a private placement, raising US$10.1 million for 22.4 percent of its shares. The money will be used to advance the company's agent to fight hepatitis B, said Martin Becker, CEO of the Kiryat Weizmann-based firm. "The biotech field in Israel suffers from difficulties in raising money locally," he said. "Only one new investment fund, Medica [Investments], specializes in Israeli biotechnology, which has been frustrating and disappointing

LONDON - British Biotech plc has appointed a new CEO to replace founding CEO Keith McCullagh, who is being forced to step down following severe problems at the company. He will be replaced Sept. 23 by Elliot Goldstein, who joins from London-based SmithKline Beecham plc, where he is senior vice president and director of worldwide strategic product development. British Biotech, based in Oxford, also said it will continue two clinical trials, despite the fact that they have been unblinded on

PARIS - Second-quarter revenues of the Paris-based drug discovery company Cerep amounted to FFr14.9 million (US$2.5 million), representing a 44 percent increase over the same period last year. Turnover in the first half of this year was FFr31.5 million, up 72 percent from the FFr18.3 million in the first six months of 1997. The company attributed its strong revenue growth to rapidly rising demand for its high-throughput pharmacological profiling services and combinatorial chemistry activities

SYDNEY - A company that specializes in organizing the vast amounts of genomic and biochemical data now being collected is set to receive an investment of about A$2 million (US$1.16 million) from the fund Biotechnology Investments Ltd., of London. EnCompass Bioinformatics Pty. Ltd., being set up now in Sydney, is a commercial spin-off from an existing collection of databases known as the Australian National Genomic Information Service (ANGIS), based at the University of Sydney. ANGIS was

PARIS - Génopoiétic, a Paris-based gene therapy company set up in 1994 to develop therapies for glioblastoma and liver and skin cancers, has successfully applied its technology in an animal model for the treatment of breast cancer. Clinical trials on women suffering from metastatic breast cancer are due to get under way in a few months. The therapy involves a combination of genetic manipulation and conventional medicinal treatment. To start, the so-called "suicide gene" HSV1-tk, which is the

LONDON - The U.K. Department of Health (DOH) is to fund the development of a diagnostic test for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in blood supplies, based on prion antibody technology developed by Proteus International plc, of Macclesfield, Cheshire. "We are not talking about a license at this stage," said Arthur Rushton, development director of Proteus. "We will be supplying materials and know-how as part of a research collaboration. Assuming success in developing the test, downstream benefits

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The challenges posed by tissue transplantation, particularly now that biotechnological techniques are widening its scope dramatically, are receiving increasing attention from regulators and international organizations - a development with obvious implications for the biotech industry. Elettra Ronchi, head of biotechnology projects at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), called for urgent international action to develop standards for

LONDON - The Belgian startup CropDesign NV announced last week it has raised US$5 million in venture capital to commercialize technology for improving crop plants by the modification and manipulation of cell cycle genes that control cell division. Funding for the company, to be based in Ghent, has come from GIMV, of Belgium, Atlas Venture, of London, and Sofinova, of France. CropDesign said it expects the three to invest a further US$6 million within the next 18 months. CropDesign will focus

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.'s DNA probes business was subjected to some tough conditions when the Swiss group won regulatory approval for its takeover of Boehringer Mannheim GmbH earlier this year. The precise nature of those conditions has just been made clear by the European Commission, the European Union's (EU) competition and antitrust watchdog, which vetted the proposed acquisition closely before authorizing it in February. In a just-published issue of the EU official

LONDON - The genomics company Oxagen Ltd. has signed a five-year collaboration with six bone research groups to identify genes associated with osteoporosis. At least 800 families with a known history of severe osteoporosis will be recruited by the clinical centers, from which Oxagen will compile a database of whole genome scans. The information from 3,000 osteoporosis sufferers and healthy family members will then be screened for markers and genes associated with the disease. Oxagen has

DUBLIN, Ireland - The Irish government has launched a public consultation process on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and environmental protection that will feed into a review of national policy. The Department of the Environment issued a consultation paper Monday to stimulate debate on the subject. The closing date for receipt of submissions is Sept. 30. This process is taking place as the wider debate among European Union (EU) member states on the amendment of Directive 90/220, the key

LONDON - Signaling a breakthrough in the pharmaceutical industry's acceptance of botanicals, Phytopharm plc and Pfizer Inc. signed a license deal for the development of P57, an appetite suppressant derived from an extract of a South African plant. Under terms of the deal, New York-based Pfizer has an exclusive worldwide license to develop and market P57. Phytopharm, of Godmanchester, U.K., will receive up to US$32 million in license fees and milestone payments, plus royalties on sales. Pfizer

SYDNEY - An Australian group has raised A$96 million (US$55.9 million) for research into the processes of aging, including the development of a diagnostic kit to assess cellular energy levels. Anthony Linnane, a fellow of the Royal Society and director of the Centre for Molecular Biology and Medicine, in Melbourne, is leading the team developing the kit, which will check the levels of the Coenzyme Q10 as a measure of cellular energy. Linnane, who has done extensive research on aging, said