LONDON - Louis Nisbet, founder and CEO of Xenova Group plc, has resigned from the company "in order to pursue other business interests." He was replaced by David Oxlade, CEO of the subsidiary Xenova Discovery, which was formed in June 1997. Oxlade is a former president of the U.S. medical diagnostic company Syva Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif. In the seven years since the forming of Xenova, Nisbet has led it to listings on Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange, and last month he signed the company
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
JERUSALEM - Novel tyrosine kinase blockers, "tyrphostins," are being enlisted in the fight against cancer, autoimmune disease and other disorders. "During the past two years we have shown that these novel tyrosine kinase blockers are selective, nontoxic and reversible inhibitors of smooth muscle cell proliferation, with very mild and non-significant inhibition of endothelial cells' proliferation," said Alexander Levitzki, professor of biological chemistry at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
LONDON - Cerebrus Ltd., which specializes in discovery and development of drugs to treat central nervous system (CNS) diseases, has raised £10.5 million in a private placement, and intends to seek a full listing within the next 12 months. All the company's existing institutional shareholders took part in the financing round. They were joined by three new U.K. institutional shareholders whose names were withheld. Cerebrus said the three do not usually invest in private companies, and they
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
DUBLIN, Ireland - The Swedish biopharmaceutical company Karo Bio AB aims to raise up to SEK119 million in an initial public offering (IPO). The Huddinge-based company applied for a listing on the O-List of the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Aros Securities and Handelsbanken Markets, both of Stockholm, are acting as advisors for the flotation. The move is designed to broaden Karo Bio's analytic coverage and attract new shareholders. In all, around SEK200 million of the company's stock will change
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
DUBLIN, Ireland - The Oresund Bridge, linking the greater Copenhagen area with southern Sweden, is expected to give the region's biotechnology sector a boost when construction is completed in 2000. Borge Diderichsen, director of corporate research affairs with Novo Nordisk A/S, of Bagsvaerd, Denmark, is a board member of the Medicon Valley Academy, a joint initiative between Denmark and Sweden that promotes the biomedical industries in the Oresund. The region is centered around Copenhagen, in
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - NeuroVir Inc., a young biotechnology company based on the campus of the University British Columbia (UBC), is a model for successful technology transfer. Margaret Moore, NeuroVir CEO, told BioWorld International that in the two years since its formation the company assembled an international team of 37 scientists and business staffers and established two major corporate collaborations. NeuroVir's technology focuses on the use of herpes simplex viruses (HSV) to
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Parliament has given its formal backing to a call for the European Union (EU) to boost agricultural biotechnology. The Parliament adopted a resolution in February at its last plenary session that fully endorses the recent upbeat report on the impact of biotechnology in farming from its Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. (See BioWorld International, Feb 4, 1998, p. 1.) Given the customary caution of the Parliament toward biotechnology, this report
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
LONDON - Cortecs plc, which specializes in oral delivery of protein and peptide drugs, plans to start a Phase III trial of its oral vaccine Pseudostat for treatment of acute bronchitis later this year. This follows two successful Phase II trials. In August 1997, the London-based company reported results from the first Phase II study, which showed that oral immunization with Pseudostat substantially reduced acute infections. Following immunization, the number of acute bronchitis episodes in the
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
LONDON - Loss of a molecule which helps cells stick together is a key event in determining the malignant nature of cancer cells, a team of European scientists has shown. They have proved that when benign adenoma cells stop expressing the cell adhesion molecule E-cadherin, these tumor cells become malignant. Gerhard Christofori, group leader at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, in Vienna, Austria, predicted this finding may make it possible to identify drugs which will control or
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 18, 1998
LONDON - Losses at British Biotech plc, of Oxford, U.K., soared in the nine months preceding January 31, 1998, rising to £30.9 million, from £18.1 million for the same period a year earlier. Losses for the third quarter were £11 million, compared to £2 million for the same quarter a year before. The company said this was "in line with [the company's] plan," reflecting increased expenditures on clinical trials and a substantial decrease in income from collaborations. Income for the quarter fell
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
BRUSSELS, Belgium - A senior official of the European Union (EU) said the organization may support more worldwide moves to impose regulation on human cloning. At the February session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, U.K. European Affairs Minister Doug Henderson, who is also President in Office of the EU Council of Ministers, said he and his fellow ministers from the EU's 15 member states would look carefully at any new suggestions from the EU's executive branch, the European
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
SYDNEY - Biotech International Ltd. has launched a A$15.7 million on-market takeover bid for Agen Biomedical Ltd. in order to achieve "critical mass" to compete in the international biotechnology market. Biotech, based in Perth, announced last week it formally bid A$0.22 cents a share for all the shares of Agen, in Brisbane, that it does not already own. Biotech bought a 19.7 percent stake in Agen late last year. But the market promptly bid Agen's share price up to A$0.24 cents, and the
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
LONDON - Chiroscience Group plc, of Cambridge, U.K., split its DNA analysis technologies out of the Seattle drug discovery division, creating a new subsidiary named Rapigene Inc. The new company, based in Seattle, will focus on the $19 billion in vitro diagnostics market, and on the use of pharmacogenomics in clinical trials, a market which Chiroscience estimates will exceed $750 million by 2005. John Padfield, CEO of Chiroscience, will also serve as CEO of Rapigene, but the company is
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Research Commissioner Edith Cresson has confirmed that the European Union (EU) is aware of ethical implications arising from chip-bound diagnostic technology and said the commission will "closely follow its legal and ethical aspects." Cresson's comment came as she was responding to questions from German Euro-MP Hiltrud Breyer on the possible dangers of unregulated commercial availability in Europe of computerized gene-based diagnostic systems. Breyer asked how
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
PARIS - U.S.-based Amgen Inc. is helping to finance the establishment of a cell therapy laboratory at a cancer clinic in Marseilles. The operation forms part of Amgen's strategy of helping university hospitals and cancer clinics in Europe to establish laboratories complying with the FDA's Good Manufacturing Practices standards so they can collaborate in the development of the biotechnology firm's products. As Christian Cailliot, head of cell and gene therapy at Amgen France, told BioWorld
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
BEIJING - Chinese scientists are researching an HIV vaccine based on studies of an effective vaccine for a fatal horse disease similar to AIDS. Working on the project are scientists from China's top AIDS research body, the AIDS Reference Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicines (CAPM), in Beijing, and the Harbin Veterinary Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), in Harbin, which is the capital city of Heilongjiang province in North China. CAAS
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
LONDON - PPL Therapeutics plc, of Edinburgh, Scotland, is looking for a partner to commercialize the blood-clotting agent Human Factor IX, after achieving an expression level of 300 mg/liter in the milk of transgenic sheep, which is a level never previously achieved, the company said. A flock of 50 sheep could produce enough of the blood-clotting plasma protein to satisfy the £100 million world market, the company said. Alan Colman, PPL's research director, said he was "very excited" by the
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
PARIS - British pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Wellcome plc negotiated a collaboration agreement with a small French biotech company called Thallia Pharmaceuticals SA, which developed a process for extracting pharmaceuticals and functional foods from microalgae and is building a photosynthesis facility for producing therapeutic compounds. Thallia's agreement with Glaxo, which is similar to one it signed with Pharmacia & Upjohn, of London, in January, provides for it to supply extracts of
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
LONDON - Cantab Pharmaceuticals plc, of Cambridge, U.K., released results for the year ending December 1997 which showed revenues more than double at £7.7 million compared with £3.1 million for 1996. While expenditure rose from £8.9 million to £13.7 million as the research and development portfolio was expanded, the cash pile also grew - by £5.8 million, from £37.1 million to £42.9 million. The company reported a loss of £3.2 million, compared with £4.5 million the year before. The share
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
SYDNEY - The Cooperative Research Centre for Vaccine Technology, in Brisbane, has achieved good results in trials with mice for a vaccine engineered to react to all forms of the virus that causes rheumatic fever and acute tonsillitis. In addition, in a separate project looking for a vaccine for malaria, the center has developed a safe method of deliberately injecting patients with the malaria parasite, then monitoring the progress of the disease using a sensitive DNA test as a means of
BioWorld International | Wednesday, March 11, 1998
LONDON - Louis Nisbet, founder and CEO of Xenova Group plc, has resigned from the company "in order to pursue other business interests." He was replaced by David Oxlade, CEO of the subsidiary Xenova Discovery, which was formed in June 1997. Oxlade is a former president of the U.S. medical diagnostic company Syva Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif. In the seven years since the forming of Xenova, Nisbet has led it to listings on Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange, and last month he signed the company