• Adventrx Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, named Jack Lief, president and chief executive officer, and a founder of Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, as its chairman. Lief joined the company's board of directors in September 2006. Lief is a former chairman of BIOCOM, an industry organization in Southern California.

• AlphaRx Inc., of Markham, Ontario, said the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) awarded a grant to itself, and scientists at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center and the Russian Research Center of Molecular Diagnostics and Therapy to develop tuberculosis treatments based on colloidal lipid nanoparticles. CRDF is a nonprofit organization authorized by Congress and established in 1995 by the National Science Foundation. The amount of the grant was not disclosed.

• BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Lincolnshire, Ill., said it agreed to reinitiate its collaboration with a subsidiary of Jerusalem-based Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd. for the development of a male testosterone therapy product for the U.S. market. Teva withdrew a previous notice of its desire to terminate the license agreement and will reinitiate funding and development of the product. Under the terms, Teva has agreed to pay BioSante certain milestone payments plus royalties on any sales, and Teva also is responsible, under the revised agreement, for continued development of the product.

• Biovest International Inc., of Worcester, Mass., a majority-owned subsidiary of Accentia Biopharmaceuticals Inc., entered an agreement with VWR International Inc., of West Chester, Pa., to distribute its AutovaxID automated cell culture device in North America. VWR plans to begin its sales and marketing activities next month. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Biovest also reported that its St. Louis-based manufacturing facility dedicated to producing AutovaxID units will be operational by September.

• Cel-Sci Corp., of Vienna, Va., said its cancer drug Multikine was granted orphan drug designation as neoadjuvant therapy in patients with squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck, which would provide seven years of marketing exclusivity upon approval in that indication. Earlier this year, the company was cleared by the FDA to begin a Phase III study of Multikine, an immunotherapy product, in advanced primary head and neck cancer patients.

• Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Denver, said the FDA's Office of Combination Products has determined that the primary mode of action for an antimicrobial wound dressing being developed by the company is that of a device and it has been assigned to the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiologic Health. The device will be reviewed through the pre-market approval process. The dressing combines EpiCeram Skin Barrier Emulsion, which has been cleared by the FDA as a medical device, with the company's proprietary Ceragenin antimicrobial compound CSA-13.

• CombinatoRx Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., and Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, are extending their collaboration based upon the successful advancement of a number of product candidates in relevant preclinical models. The joint research under the agreement, which aims at creating next-generation drug devices and local medicines, was extended beyond the initial two and a half years to a total of five years, resulting in a $7 million payment to CombinatoRx due before Oct. 3. The companies signed the deal in October 2005. Angiotech received an option to evaluate and exclusively license compounds from the CombinatoRx clinical and preclinical pipeline and its bioinformatics database for development and potential commercialization in certain medical device and local interventional applications. Under the terms, Angiotech made an up-front license payment of $27 million plus a $15 million equity investment in exchange for the option to license up to 10 CombinatoRx compounds. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 5, 2005.)

• CyDex Inc., of Lenexa, Kan., has signed a license and supply agreement granting exclusive worldwide rights to its Captisol-enabling technology to Critical Therapeutics Inc., of Lexington, Mass., for development of an injectable formulation of zileuton. Critical Therapeutics, and its co-promotion partner, Dey LP, currently market asthma drug ZYFLO (zileuton tablets), in the U.S. Critical Therapeutics expects to initiate a phase II clinical trial for the injectable formulation of zileuton in the second half of 2007, following favorable results from an earlier clinical trial in asthma patients. The phase II trial will be focused on identifying the optimal dose to be tested in phase III clinical trials. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• deCODE genetics, of Reykjavik, Iceland, has completed a sale and leaseback of its Woodridge, Ill., medicinal chemistry facility. The company sold the facility for $25 million to an unnamed buyer and has entered into a lease with an initial term of 17 years. After costs associated with the outstanding mortgage on the facility, taxes and expenses, deCODE netted $18.4 million, resources the company can apply to its drug and diagnostic development programs.

• Eurand NV, of Milan, Italy, said Eurand Pharmaceuticals Ltd. initiated the rolling submission of its new drug application for Zentase to treat exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. Zentase, formerly EUR-1008, has been granted fast-track designation by the FDA. The filing includes results from two Phase III studies demonstrating that Zentase, a porcine-derived pancreatic enzyme product, showed a clinically relevant increase in the absorption of fat, protein and other nutrients, which is maintained over time.

• Favrille Inc., of San Diego, acquired a series of optimized anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies from Diversa Corp., also of San Diego. In the deal, Favrille gains rights to antibodies that were optimized using Diversa's Human Framework Reassembly technology, along with the corresponding patents and an exclusive, royalty-free license to selected pending patents for commercialization of the panel. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Favrille, which is developing its lead immunotherapy product, FavId, for B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, expects to explore the Diversa compounds as next-generation treatment approaches for that indication.

• GeneThera Inc., of Wheat Ridge, Colo., received a contract from the Intramural Research Program, the National Institute on Aging and the National Institutes of Health to genetically engineer monoclonal antibodies to make them clinically usable. The antibodies are expected to be used to treat hypertension. Work will begin June 20, and will be performed at GeneThera's Colorado facility.

• Illumina Inc., of San Diego, launched iControlDB, an industry-hosted genotyping control repository available for immediate use by researchers conducting case-control whole-genome association studies. The repository is designed to provide a rapid way for investigators to obtain control samples, allowing them to focus resources on genotyping disease samples. Combined with the database of Genotype and Phenotype, Illumina said the scientific community now can access nearly 10,000 control samples.

• Nanogen Inc., of San Diego, has received funding from several Canadian agencies, including the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, to develop diagnostic tools to detect natural or potential bioterror threats to livestock, such as foot and mouth disease and avian flu, employing the company's NanoChip platform. The automated multiplexing platform uses advanced microarray technology to perform pathogen sequence detection and genotyping applications. Terms were not disclosed.

• OncoMethylome Sciences SA, of Liege, Belgium, and Exact Sciences Corp., of Marlborough, Mass., entered agreements to advance the commercialization of stool-based colorectal cancer screening technologies through service laboratories in Europe and North America. Under the terms, Exact granted nonexclusive rights to its DNA stabilization, isolation and extraction technology to OncoMethylome for screening tests using OncoMethylome's methylation detection technology. In exchange, OncoMethylome agreed to pay royalties to Exact based on sales.

• Oxford Gene Technology, of Oxford, UK., has granted Aushon BioSystems, of Burlington, Mass., access to OGT's Southern array patents, the fundamental patents covering the manufacture and marketing of oligonucleotide microarrays. The license enables Aushon BioSystems to manufacture and sell oligonucleotide microarrays worldwide, and to perform services based on oligonucleotide arrays. The license will remain valid for the patents' lifetime. Financial details were not disclosed.

• Repligen Corp., of Waltham, Mass., said the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts issued sanctions on motions filed by Repligen and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) against ImClone Systems Inc., of New York, based on Repligen's claim that ImClone attempted to intimite a witness in the Erbitux patent infringement case. The court found that two ImClone's attorneys unlawfully obstructed access to evidence, the company said. The court also found that the actions of ImClone's counsel were intended to block the cooperation of a key witness. The Court barred one of ImClone's in-house counsel from any further access to, or use of, confidential information in this case. The court also prohibited ImClone from any further communication with the witness or his employer. The court granted Repligen and MIT permission to introduce evidence of the improper conduct of ImClone's attorneys at trial. A trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 10 on accusations by Repligen and MIT that ImClone's used patented technology without a license.

• Sigma-Aldrich, of St. Louis, has signed a licensing agreement with Epigentek Group Inc., of Brooklyn, N.Y., to further develop and commercialize technologies for Epigenetics research. Sigma-Aldrich gains rights to core Epigentek technologies, including DNA modification, methylation quantitation and protein/DNA interaction. The agreement is exclusive in the U.S. and co-exclusive globally. Financial details were not disclosed.

• VIA Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Francisco, was notified by Nasdaq that it did not comply with the $15 million market value of publicly held shares requirement upon consummation of its merger with Corautus Genetics Inc., of Atlanta. The company has until June 29 to submit evidence of compliance.

• Vical Inc., of San Diego, has been awarded a three-year, $6 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop a DNA vaccine manufacturing process that can produce several million doses of vaccines in a matter of days. The company's RapidResponse DNA vaccine platform has demonstrated 100 percent protection of mice against a lethal challenge with H3N2 influenza after a single 2-mcg dose of Vaxfectin-formulated DNA vaccine produced by polymerase chain reaction.

• Zen-Bio Inc., of Research Triangle Park, N.C., said it was awarded a $185,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health. The 12-month grant will be used to fund the isolation and culturing of skeletal muscles cells, which will be used in the development of a human myocytes and adipocyte co-culture system. Skeletal muscle as well as adipocytes are important sites of insulin-stimulated glucose disposal and are sites of insulin resistance in obese individuals, Zen-Bio said.