• Acacia Research Corp., of Newport Beach, Calif., said its CombiMatrix group, in collaboration with Texas A&M University, was awarded a National Academies Keck Futures Initiative grant. It will fund a novel method to increase the speed of hybridization in DNA microarray applications.

• Biolex Therapeutics Inc., of Pittsboro, N.C., expanded its collaboration with Medarex Inc., of Princeton, N.J., to include commercial-line creation for two additional Medarex antibodies. The agreement initially was formed in February 2005 to create a commercial line for an undisclosed monoclonal antibody using the Biolex LEX System. Under the expanded agreement, Medarex may elect to engage Biolex to scale-up and manufacture the proteins following the commercial line-creation phase.

• Cellegy Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Huntingdon Valley, Pa., said Epsilon Pharmaceuticals acquired the shares of Cellegy Australia Pty. Ltd. in exchange for $1.25 million in cash, plus an additional amount to be collected over the next 90 days. Cellegy decided to sell the unit in order to focus on its U.S. business. Cellegesic nitroglycerin ointment 0.4 percent for pain relief from chronic anal fissure will be undergoing an FDA advisory committee review April 25. The product has been marketed as Rectogesic in the UK since May 2005. Epsilon will continue to market it in Australia and several additional Far East markets. Separately, Cellegy's European partner for Tostrex, ProStrakan Group plc, of Galashiels, UK, concluded the European Union's Mutual Recognition Procedure (MRP), meaning national licenses can be issued in the 19 countries, other than Sweden, included in the MRP submission application. Tostrex, a 2 percent topical testosterone gel to treat male hypogonadism, was launched in Sweden in September 2005.

• CyGenics Ltd., of Melbourne, Australia, said it plans to acquire a significant stake in the Netherlands-based PharmaCell BV. Through this investment, CyGenics will be able to build on PharmaCell's resources for product and process design and use its manufacturing facility. PharmaCell and CyGenics are two partners in the Pacrima R&D collaboration to develop a platform for growing antigen-specific T cells and to test whether these cells are suitable for therapeutic use in the treatment of cancer.

• CytoDyn Inc., of Santa Fe, N.M., entered a strategic alliance with the technology transfer company UTEK Corp., of Plant City, Fla. CytoDyn, a development-stage biotech company, expects the arrangement to enhance its intellectual property portfolio through the acquisition of new university discoveries. CytoDyn already has targeted immune therapies in Phase II development for immunologically mediated infectious diseases. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• Emisphere Technologies, Inc., of Tarrytown, N.Y., said it has completed enrollment of the first 120 patients in its Phase II trial of oral insulin, and has received permission from regulatory authorities in India to expand enrollment from 120 patients to 140 patients. By expanding the trial, Emisphere will be able to evaluate the performance of all three active arms of the trial against each other for statistical significance. The company said it is encouraged by the number of patients showing a greater than 1 percent drop in hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels at 60 days. In addition, those patients are not showing weight gain.

• Genzyme Corp., of Cambridge, Mass., said it has established a program to discover treatments for neglected diseases affecting the developing world. The company's new Humanitarian Assistance for Neglected Diseases (HAND) initiative will serve as a vehicle to identify, evaluate and manage scientific projects and partnerships focused on diseases that collectively affect hundreds of millions of people. The company will not seek to profit from the commercialization of any products it helps to develop, and it will grant all commercial and intellectual property rights in neglected disease areas to nonprofit partners. The HAND initiative complements existing Genzyme programs that provide free medicines and help to build sustainable health care systems in developing countries.

• GNI Ltd., of Tokyo, agreed to form a strategic alliance and took a minority stake in Beijing Continent Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., of Beijing. The latter, a sales and manufacturing company, provides the former further inroads into the Chinese pharmaceutical market. NewCap Partners Inc., a U.S. investment banking firm, and China Chengxin Financial Consultancy Co. Ltd., a Chinese investment banking firm, served as GNI's advisers. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• Illumina Inc., of San Diego, signed a genotyping services agreement to support prostate cancer researchers funded by Cancer Research UK. The agreement is valued at nearly $7 million. Illumina's group will conduct whole-genome genotyping for at least 4,000 well-classified prostate patients and controls. A second phase will involve development of a custom, 12-sample BeadChip that will enable analysis of 24,000 SNPs per sample and be used to genotype at least 8,000 samples.

• InforSense Ltd., of London, joined forces with GeneGo Inc., of St. Joseph, Mich., to integrate their technologies in order to allow researchers to better probe data and share work processes across different research domains. GeneGo also has joined the InforSense Open Workflow Partner Network. The agreement integrates GeneGo's reference system for curated pathway analysis and InforSense's interactive, workflow-based data-mining technology.

• Invitrogen Corp., of Carlsbad, Calif., entered an agreement with Signalomics GmbH, of Steinfurt, Germany, to develop nanocrystal reagents with the ability to enhance the identification of tumors in in vivo patient tissue by detecting the presence of a single cancerous cell. The collaboration's initial goal is to develop an imaging agent that can be used to identify colon carcinomas requiring surgical intervention. Through the agreement, Signalomics is continuing the joint development and identification of nanobiotech diagnostic products that it began two years ago in cooperation with the BioPixels business unit of BioCrystal Ltd., of Westerville, Ohio. Invitrogen acquired that business last fall.

• KineMed Inc., of Emeryville, Calif., signed an exclusive agreement with Forbes Medi-Tech Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, to discover non-cardiovascular indications for an undisclosed compound. KineMed will screen the Forbes compound using its in vivo KineMarker assays. Both companies will have the option to pursue development in any discovered indications.

• Micronics Inc., of Redmond, Wash., was awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., to develop a point-of-care diagnostic system for the early detection of colon cancer. Initial efforts will focus on tumor cell detection using the company's microfluidics technology, followed by evaluation of the test's clinical utility in colon cancer patients. Micronics' work will be in collaboration with researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

• Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., could feel the impact of a federal appellate court decision in a patent case related to the company's most advanced product candidate. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded a lower court decision after hearing an appeal brought forth by Sanofi Aventis Group, of Paris, which makes the low-molecular-weight heparin product called Lovenox that is in question. Used to prevent blood clots, it is the basis of a technology-enabled generic version developed by Momenta, M-Enoxaparin. The original suit relates to two abbreviated new drug applications filed with the FDA by other generic companies, for which the former Aventis SA filed suit citing patent infringement. One analyst, Andrew McDonald with ThinkEquity Partners LLC, said in a research note that the appeal court's decision to throw the case back to the district court was a setback for Momenta as it signals a delay in M-Enoxaparin's launch. However, Eric Schmidt with SG Cowen & Co. LLC said that the decision was not particularly significant for the company's longer-term value proposition. He agreed that the drug's launch could be delayed as a result, but noted that concern should be focused on whether Momenta's technology is good enough to support sole generic approval of M-enoxaparin. The company filed an abbreviated new drug application for the product late last summer.

• Myriad Genetics Inc., of Salt Lake City, and Abbott Laboratories, of Abbott Park, Ill., entered into a five-year drug discovery collaboration to identify novel therapeutic targets. Myriad will use its genetics, RNA expression profiling and other discovery technologies to identify human genes and regulatory networks associated with a variety of diseases. It ultimately will identify the genetic basis of disease, and Abbott will advance the genes through its chemical genomics platform to identify targets and leads for drug discovery. Each company will have exclusive rights to the targets and drug-lead compounds. Myriad will receive about 40 percent of the targets, while Abbott will receive about 60 percent.

• Pharmacopeia Drug Discovery Inc., of Princeton, N.J., said that a compound identified through its ongoing collaboration with Kenilworth, N.J.-based Schering-Plough Corp. is being evaluated as a potential treatment for respiratory disease. Under terms of the companies' collaboration, the development triggers a milestone payment to Pharmacopeia. The partners have been working together since 1994. Presently, Schering-Plough is investigating a CXCR2 antagonist from the collaboration in Phase I trials targeting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Schering-Plough is responsible for further development of the compounds, and Pharmacopeia is eligible to receive milestone payments and sales royalties on resulting products.

• Phyton Biotech Inc., of East Windsor, N.J., and DiAthegen LLC, of Athens, Ohio, signed a licensing agreement whereby Phyton will develop and commercialize DiAthegen's long-acting growth hormone receptor antagonist to treat acromegaly, cancer and diabetes. Phyton receives worldwide marketing rights in exchange for milestone and royalty payments to DiAthegen. It also receives certain rights to the application of DiAthegen's technology to additional protein products. DiAthegen licensed the growth hormone antagonist as well as the underlying plant cell culture technology platform from Ohio University.

• SAFC Biosciences, of Lenexa, Kan., and Vivalis, of Nantes, France, launched their EX-CELL EBx platform to successfully complete the first stage of their ongoing collaboration. The product includes viral growth and production media designed to support EBx cells, a chicken embryonic-derived stem cell line for the growth and production of viral vaccines for therapeutic use. SAFC is part of the Sigma-Aldrich Group, of St. Louis.

• Syngenta AG, of Basel, Switzerland, launched a $100 million venture fund called LSP BioVentures. It will be based in Boston and managed by the biotech venture capital firm Life Sciences Partners. Funds will be invested over a three- to five-year period in growth companies and technology start-up opportunities focused on crop biotechnology, crop protection and new growth areas such as biomaterials and biofuels.