• Boston Life Sciences Inc., of Boston, filed an investigational new drug application to test Fluoratec, its technetium-based imaging agent for the diagnosis of both Parkinson’s disease and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

• EntreMed Inc., of Rockville, Md., said it would release data on its Phase I study of Endostatin after data from all three centers are fully evaluated, mostly likely this fall. The company’s comments came after a news report speculated the trials were not going well, causing the company’s stock (NASDAQ:ENMD) to plummet 30 percent, or $12.625, Thursday. The stock gained $1.625 of it back Friday to close at $30.50.

• Hyseq Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., said its standard HyChip biochip now sequences 5,000 bases of DNA in a single reaction, giving it five times the capacity of traditional gel sequencing technologies. The results were presented at the Genome Sequencing and Biology Conference at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

• Immtech International Inc., of Vernon Hill, N.J., said that higher doses of DB-368 increased the survival of mice given lethal doses of Aspergillus. DB-368 is one of several compounds being screened for fungicidal activity that has proven effective against Aspergillus and other fungi. Invasive primary Aspergillus frequently causes death in immune-suppressed patients, particularly those with leukemia or solid-organ transplantation.

• Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, said Phase II tests showed that the optimal dose for Ontak, its treatment for patients with severe psoriasis, is 5 mg/kg of body weight per day, given intravenously for three consecutive days every other week for up to eight ways. These results were published in the April 2000 issue of The Journal of Investigative Dermatology and presented at the 61th annual meeting of the Society for Investigative Dermatology in Chicago.

• NPS Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Salt Lake City, said it has satisfied all conditions for a $2 million equity investment by Johnson & Johnson Development Corp. (JJDC), an affiliate of Johnson & Johnson, of New Brunswick, N.J. The investment will be made pursuant to an October 1998 agreement between J&J and its unit, Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V., of Beerse, Belgium, and Allelix Biopharmaceuticals Inc., of Mississauga, Ontario, now a wholly owned subsidiary of NPS. Following the $2 million payment, JJDC will have a $4 million equity stake in NPS.

• SuperGen Inc., of San Ramon, Calif., entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the National Cancer Institute for decitabine, the company’s anticancer compound. SuperGen will provide clinical supplies of decitabine to the NCI, which will launch and support several clinical studies evaluating the potential role of decitabine in a number of solid tumors and hematological malignancies. The studies also will evaluate the role of decitabine’s unique mechanism of action – the hypomethylation of DNA – in gene regulation and the regulation of growth and redifferentiation of malignant cells. SuperGen intends to start Phase III studies with decitabine for myelodysplastic syndrome and Phase II studies for non-small cell lung cancer.

• Symyx Technologies Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif., will collaborate with the Institut fuer Microtechnik Mainz GmbH, of Mainz, Germany, to develop microfluidic and microelectromechanical systems to expand and enhance Symyx’s platforms for the rapid discovery of new materials. The collaboration aims at creating microreactors on chips that will enable Symyx scientists to evaluate hundreds of catalysts simultaneously under conditions representative of conventional commercial processes. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• Tanox Inc., of Houston, said the underwriters of its recent initial public offering (IPO) exercised their overallotment option, buying 1.125 million shares at the offering price of $28.50 each. In total, the company raised $244.2 million in the IPO, and net proceeds were $225.9 million. CIBC World Markets Corp., of New York, acted at the lead manager. Robertson Stephens, of San Francisco; Warburg Dillon Read LLC, of New York; Harkness & Hill Inc., of Boston; and KBC Securities NV, of Brussels, Belgium, acted as co-managers. (See BioWorld Today, April 10, 2000, p. 1.)

• The Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International awarded a $10 million grant to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh to establish the JDF Center for Gene Therapy Approaches to Type I diabetes. Seven research projects will be undertaken, most of which will focus on making islet cell transplants viable for young patients. Islet cells are located in the pancreas and produce insulin. The JDF Center’s goals are to develop new gene therapy techniques that will increase the supply of islet cells available for transplantation and to protect transplanted islet cells from immune system attack.

• University of Washington researchers reported the first direct evidence in mice that protein kinase A (PKA) signaling regulates both alcohol-seeking behavior and sensitivity to some of the effects of alcohol intoxication. The findings were published in the May 15 issue of Journal of Neuroscience.

• Vical Inc., of San Diego, said that an independent drug safety review board recommended that current Phase II and Phase III registration trials with Allovectin-7 targeting metastatic melanoma should progress as planned, based on a review of safety and preliminary efficacy data. Allovectin-7 is a DNA/lipid complex containing the human gene encoding the HLA-B7 antigen.