• Actelion Ltd., of Allschwil/Basel, Switzerland, said it will discontinue the clinical development of its Phase I rennin inhibitor alliance with Merck & Co. Inc., of Whitehouse Station, N.J., based on results from several clinical studies. The alliance will continue to assess other renin inhibitors currently in the drug discovery phase.

• Arrayit Corp., of Sunnyvale, Calif., said its scientists made a discovery which combines advances in surface chemistry, bioinformatics, instrumentation and microarray technology, reducing the time required to analyze the human genome from several days to less than six hours.

• BioMS Medical Corp., of Edmonton, Alberta, said an independent data safety monitoring board for the pivotal Phase III MAESTRO-01 Canadian/European trial of dirucotide in patients with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis has completed a safety analysis and recommended that the trial continue per protocol. The multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial is designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of dirucotide in patients with secondary progressive MS.

• Galapagos NV, of Mechelen, Belgium, has initiated an integrated drug discovery collaboration with Opsona Therapeutics Ltd., of Dublin, Ireland. Under the terms of the agreement, Galapagos' service division BioFocus DPI will perform biology, medicinal chemistry and ADME/PK services for an Opsona drug discovery program. Opsona will make research payments to BioFocus DPI and fund the work of four to five BioFocus DPI scientists this year. No financial terms were disclosed.

• HUYA Bioscience International, of San Diego, has entered into an agreement with Abbott, of Abbott Park, Ill., to identify and pursue preclinical and clinical drug candidates that originate in China. Abbott will gain access to HUYA's Chinese bioscience network, which includes access to compounds and biologics in a variety of indications. HUYA currently has two clinical stage drugs licensed from China in the therapeutic areas of cardiovascular and oncology for development in the West. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• Materia Inc., of Pasadena, Calif., received Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for the further development of a family of advanced reagents for drug discovery. The program is a collaborative effort between Materia and Paul R. Hanson from the University of Kansas.

• Par Pharmaceutical Cos. Inc., of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., has entered into a settlement agreement with Reliant Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Liberty Corner, N.J., resolving patent litigation related to Reliant's Rythmol SR product. Under the terms of the settlement, Par gains the right to introduce a generic version of Rythmol SR on Jan. 1, 2011, or earlier under certain circumstances. Financial details were not revealed, but all litigation has been dismissed.

• Qiagen, of Venlo, the Netherlands, and the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, of Kolkata, India, are collaborating to establish the first large-scale cervical cancer screening program for women in Kolkata. Qiagen will provide its diagnostic tests for the human papillomavirus and the institute will conduct the screening and provide appropriate treatment as needed.

• Roche NimbleGen, of Basel, Switzerland, and Sigma-Aldrich Co., of St. Louis, have started a collaboration to further chromatin immunoprecipitation-on-microarray research by aligning their two complementary technologies, Roche NimbleGen's ChIP-chip high-density microarrays and GenomePlex by Sigma-Aldrich. Together, the platforms enable researchers to study the entire genome for epigenetic interactions between DNA and DNA-binding proteins to determine regions of the genome that are transcriptionally active or repressed as well as the mechanisms that regulate those processes.

• Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals Inc., of Lexington, Ky., said it has received more than $395,000 in additional Small Business Innovation Research funding, of which $295,614 was from the National Institutes of Health and $100,000 was from the KY Cabinet for Economic Development's Department of Commercialization and Innovation. The funds will be used to support the firm's work in hyperactive transposons for mutagenesis in rodents.

• Vectura Group, of London, said it has received a milestone payment of €2.5 million (US$3.2 million) from Sandoz International GmbH, of Holzkirchen, Germany, a division of Novartis AG, for development work on VR315, a combination asthma-chronic obstructive pulmonary disease product.