* CDR Therapeutics Inc., of Seattle, and CellGenEx Inc., of Chicago, merged to form a privately held company called Xcyte Therapies Inc., which will be headquartered in Seattle. Xcyte, focused on antibody engineering for development of antibody-based and small molecule drugs, also completed a $4.1 million private equity financing from ARCH Venture Partners, the development arm of the University of Chicago; The Sprout Group, of Menlo Park, Calif.; Alta Partners, of San Francisco; and Sofinnova, of Paris. All four are former investors in CDR.

* NPS Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Salt Lake City, and AquaBio Products Sciences L.L.C., of Bar Harbor, Maine, have signed a cross-licensing deal. AquaBio will use NPS's drug technology to improve aquaculture, while NPS received rights to use compounds or biological structures discovered by AquaBio that may have human therapeutic applications. NPS acquired six percent of AquaBio, with options to acquire additional shares in the future.

* PRIZM Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, completed a $4.2 million private round of financing, bringing to more than $34 million the total raised by the private company since its inception in 1992. Participants were existing PRIZM investors Biotechvest, Chase Venture Capital, Domain/BIL, Forrest Binkley & Brown, Forward Ventures, Oxford Bioscience, Sofinnova, The Sprout Group, Techno Venture Management, Venkol and Ventures Medical.

* Seragen Inc., of Hopkinton, Mass., said its common stock will be delisted from the NASDAQ market. Despite the economic boost from an option agreement with U.S. Surgical Corp., of Norwalk, Conn. (see BioWorld Today, Aug. 4, 1997, p.1), the current level of tangible assets disqualifies Seragen from NASDAQ listing, said Chairman and CEO Reed Prior. Bid and asked quotations are available on the OTC Bulletin Board under the symbol SRGN.