LONDON - Two of the U.K.'s leading biotechnology companies have faced up to the high cost of getting rid of unwanted executives as Chiroscience Group plc agreed to pay Nowell Stebbing, former CEO and deputy chairman, £3.25 million and Cortecs plc received a writ from Glen Travers, former chairman and CEO, claiming £1.5 million in compensation for his loss of office. Chiroscience, the drug discovery and development company which acquired Darwin Molecular Inc., of Seattle, in December 1996

* Antisoma plc, of London, received approval from the U.K. Medicines Control Agency to start pivotal Phase III trials of Theragyn for the treatment of ovarian cancer. This follows approvals from the FDA and elsewhere in Europe for the same Phase III program. Theragyn, licensed from the London-based Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), is a murine monoclonal antibody directed against polymorphic epithelial mucin, a protein produced in an abnormal form by more than 90 percent of ovarian cancers

LONDON - Drug discovery services company Oxford Molecular Group (OMG) plc has agreed to invest up to £2.5 million in MicroGenics Ltd., an Oxford University spin-off, with the aim of eventually turning it into a subsidiary. MicroGenics was formed by Jeff Errington, professor of microbiology at Oxford, in the U.K., to develop screening systems for novel antibiotics based on his research into bacterial cell division and spore formation. OMG is paying £500,000 for 19.99 percent of the ordinary

LONDON - The U.K. government awarded a grant of £600,000 to PPL Therapeutics plc and the Roslin Institute for research to protect the U.K.'s lead in cloning by nuclear transfer. The grant, to be matched by £600,000 of funding from PPL itself, will be spent on a three-year project to improve the precision of genetic modification using nuclear transfer. The aim is to develop techniques for removing, as well as replacing, genes, and thus to produce proteins it was not previously possible to

SYDNEY - A biotechnology group in Melbourne plans to raise about A$10 million by floating off in a separate one-project company an anti-fat treatment that has shown considerable promise in trials with mice. The money raised in the float of the new company, to be called Metabolic Pharmaceuticals Ltd., will be used for human trials in the U.S. of the treatment - a reengineered fragment of the human growth hormone that can be taken orally. To remain under the control of its parent, Melbourne

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Commission (EC) has decided to take Portugal to the European Union's highest tribunal, the European Court of Justice, for failure to respect rules on biotechnology. Portugal has not properly implemented the 1990 policies on contained use and deliberate release of genetically modified organisms, EC officials said, and despite repeated warnings has not changed its national laws sufficiently. The laws should have been in force by October 1991. The EC also issued

HAMBURG, Germany - Interactiva Biotechnologie GmbH, a genomics company that bills itself as a virtual laboratory, has entered an exclusive agreement with Swedish research centers covering the analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms. Interactiva, of Ulm, Germany, was founded three years ago by Flavio Ortigao, a bioinformatics specialist at the University of Ulm. Ortigao had the idea of creating a company based on the vast opportunities of the Internet and supplies of custom-made bio-organic

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Martin Bangemann, European commissioner for industry, said the European Commission (EC) and other political authorities face a major challenge in convincing the public that "opportunities of biotechnology are immense - both in economic and in social terms." Bangemann made his comments at a pharmaceutical industry conference in Berlin late last month, locating his remarks firmly in the context of the current widespread negative sentiment toward biotechnology in Europe. "We

Perhaps the only aspects of tropical diseases that might be considered entertaining are the names they collect. Mal morado, volvulosis, Robles' disease and river blindness, for instance, all describe a single parasitic infection formally known as onchocerciasis. The cause of this nonfatal, chronic infection is the round worm Onchocerca volvulus. Spread by blood-sucking female blackflies, river blindness can produce symptoms that range from rashes to skin atrophy to blindness. Eighteen

LONDON - Therapeutic Antibodies Inc. (TAB) raised US$3.2 million in interim funding as the first stage of re-financing the company and said it will cut costs by ending a clinical trial of its CytoTAb antitumor necrosis factor (TNF) antibody in the treatment of sepsis. The US$3.2 million, raised in a private placement, will fund TAB to the end of 1998. It involved short-term interest-bearing notes with warrants. The notes carry a 15 percent coupon and are repayable in 180 days. The five-year

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized state participation in the European Union's fifth Research and Technological Development framework during a meeting with an interministerial committee including representatives from the ministries of Industry and Trade, Finance and Science and the Council of Higher Education. All members of the committee endorsed participation except Finance Minister Yaakov Neeman, who said the $160 million participation fee for the four-year

PARIS - Drug discovery company Cerep SA has concluded a licensing agreement with Xenometrix Inc., a U.S.-based firm that has developed proprietary technologies in the areas of gene expression profiling and gene toxicity. The deal gives Cerep, of Paris, a nonexclusive license to Boulder, Colo.-based Xenometrix's gene profiling system as well as limited rights to sublicense it. The system, which is already patent-protected in Europe and for which a patent is due to be granted shortly in the U

LONDON - The U.K.'s latest start-up, Enzacta Ltd., raised £2 million for the discovery and development of targeted chemotherapies for cancer. The company said it has an integrated technology base, or "toolkit," for targeting agents, enzymes, clearance agents and drugs. Its lead program is expected to enter clinical trials later this year. Jon Dickens, Enzacta CEO, told BioWorld International, "Our focus is on the discovery and development of therapies which have site-specific effects. We

SYDNEY - The share price of Peptech Ltd. has had a wild ride since Peptech became the first Australian biotechnology company to receive U.S. clearance for a drug. Peptech Managing Director Michael Cohen said the Sydney-based company won FDA approval for its Ovuplant implant, used primarily to increase fertility rates in horses. Peptech's stock price already had moved up from around A$0.22 a share to nearly A$0.40 in early June, as the market assessed the company's chances of having the horse

PARIS - The French government has been urged by a panel of 14 members of the general public to be extremely vigilant about the cultivation of transgenic plants and their use in the production of food. The panel, scientifically selected to be representative of the French population, spent two days late last month listening to the views of researchers, farmers, seed companies, environmentalists, consumer associations and lawyers. The 15-page report it produced was not a unanimous document, and

BRUSSELS, Belgium - More than 150 European Union (EU) biotechnology research projects are to receive funding of about US$150 million under a new plan proposed by European Commissioner for Research Edith Cresson. The projects include the development of new vaccines and therapeutic drugs, the optimization of bioprocesses ensuring food safety and environment restoration. Health-oriented projects range from searching for new antimicrobials; controlling the spread of antibiotic resistance

LONDON - Human monoclonal antibody specialist Cambridge Antibody Technology Group plc has agreed to buy the U.S. company Aptein Inc. for up to US$11 million in stock. Aptein has only one employee and Cambridge Antibody does not intend to maintain the company's Seattle office and laboratory. Instead, Royston, U.K.-based Cambridge Antibody wants control of Aptein's polysome display technology, which it believes will provide a powerful extension to its own phage display platform. John Aston

The tea-time question "One lump or two?" is innocuous. If, however, the sugar cubes in question were in the possession of Baron Otto Karl von Rosen, a prudent response to the familiar query would be "none." The baron was a spy and saboteur for Germany during World War I. His sugar cubes were altered to produce a lethal aftertaste. They were loaded with anthrax. Remarkably, some of the baron's bacilli have been revived after eight decades of dormancy. The microbial resuscitation represents a

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Demonstrations by French farmers against biotechnology monopolies and European Parliament questions on how effectively the European Union (EU) can prevent accidental release onto the market of genetically engineered crops are just two of the latest examples in a growing wave of concern over the direction of biotechnology in Europe. The concerns about accidental release were raised after two tons of Monsanto's genetically modified sugar beets from field trials in the