• Abraxis BioScience Inc., of Los Angeles, said its board authorized a program to repurchase up to $100 million of the company's common stock. The firm said it believed its shares were undervalued and that its strong financial position makes the purchase of its own shares a sound investment at this time. Share repurchases, if any, will be funded by internal cash resources and will be made through open market purchases. The timing, volume and nature of share repurchases are subject to market prices and conditions, applicable securities laws and other factors, and are at the discretion of company management, the company said.

• Across America Financial Services Inc., of Denver, said it completed the acquisition of Apro Bio Pharmaceutical Corp., of Salt Lake City. In conjunction with the acquisition, AAFS raised $1.87 million in gross proceeds, before fees, which the firm said was led by an institutional investor. Bathgate Capital Partners LLC acted as the placement agent and financial advisor to Apro in regard to the transaction. The firm also said that Charles Dinarello has been appointed as acting CEO of AAFS.

• Biogen Idec Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., reported a sixth Tysabri patient has been diagnosed with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. The company reported on its website that the latest case, dated April 15, was a non-U.S. multiple sclerosis patient who had been taking Tysabri for 31 months.

• Cytokinetics Inc., of South San Francisco, Calif., reported data related to CK-2017357, a fast skeletal muscle troponin activator, contained in a poster presented at the 2009 Experimental Biology Conference held in New Orleans. Cytokinetics plans to initiate a Phase I trial of CK-2017357 in healthy volunteers later this year.

• Expression Analysis, of Durham, N.C., and RainDance Technologies, of Lexington, Mass., said they are collaborating to accelerate research into complex diseases in a partnership that will characterize rare mutations that would otherwise prove difficult or impossible to identify using alternative methods. The companies said they are sponsoring a program to work directly with leading cancer researchers to define a panel of high-priority genomic targets in order to facilitate large-scale targeted resequencing studies of cancer samples.

• Gilead Sciences Inc., of Foster City, Calif., has completed its acquisition of CV Therapeutics Inc. Each outstanding share of CV Therapeutics not owned by Gilead, its subsidiaries or CV Therapeutics has been automatically converted into the right to receive $20 in cash, without interest, subject to appraisal rights. Gilead agreed to purchase CV Therapeutics in a $1.4 billion deal announced last month. (See BioWorld Today, March 13, 2009.)

• Hadasit Medical Research Services & Development Ltd., of Jerusalem, the technology transfer company of the Hadassah Medical Organization, and Immuron Ltd. (formerly Anadis Ltd.), of New York and Melbourne, Australia, have entered an agreement whereby Immuron will assign from Hadasit a novel oral immune modulation technology developed by Hadassah physicians and scientists. Under the agreement, Hadasit also will provide clinical and laboratory services to Immuron. In return, Hadasit shall be issued 19.99 percent of Immuron's equity at the time of the approval of the transaction by Immuron's shareholders, as well as royalties on Immuron products.

• Illumina Inc., of San Diego, and Agilent Technologies Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif., have entered a nonexclusive co-marketing agreement to support a scalable solution for researchers conducting targeted resequencing studies. The Agilent SureSelect Target Enrichment System is optimized for Illumina's sequencing platform, the Genome Analyzer.

• IntelGenx Corp., of Saint Laurent, Quebec, reported results of a clinical pilot study for a new antihypertensive product. The results indicated that the product is bioequivalent to a leading antihypertensive product brand, the company said. The product has been developed using IntelGenx's proprietary multilayer Versatab delivery technology, a method of formulating up to three active ingredients in a single dosage form

• MolecularMD Corp., of Portland, Ore., said it has granted a sublicense agreement for the detection of ABL kinase mutations in chronic myelogenous leukemia patients to the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research.

• NextGen Sciences, of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Expression Pathology Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md., said they have a protein biomarker assay methodology that provides, for the first time, rapid, reproducible, quantitative measurement of protein expression in formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue samples.

• Psylin Neurosciences Inc., of San Diego, a joint venture biotechnology company spun out of San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc., and PsychoGenics Inc., of Tarrytown, N.Y., said it has initiated development of PSN0041, a peptide from Amylin's Phormol polypeptide hormone library, for the treatment of depression.

• Sunesis Pharmaceuticals Inc., of South San Francisco, has been notified by Nasdaq that it does not comply with the $10 million minimum stockholders' equity requirement for continued listing. The company said that since the determination was made, it has completed a $43.5 million financing which, and that it will prepare a plan to regain compliance.