• Cleveland BioLabs Inc., of Cleveland, said its monkey study with Protectan CBLB502's as a mitigator of both gastrointestinal and hematopoietic, radiation-induced damage showed strong survival benefit. Rhesus monkeys were irradiated with 6.5 Gy of total body irradiation and injected intramuscularly with either a single dose of Protectan CBLB502 or a placebo, one hour after irradiation. No supportive therapy was applied. The animals were observed for 40 days. CBLB502 enabled survival of 70 percent of the animals in the protected group, vs. the control group, in which 20 percent survived. Full results will be offered at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting later this month in Los Angeles.

• FASgen Inc., of Baltimore, was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Cancer Institute for refinement of its serum FAS (fatty acid synthase) ELISA cancer diagnostic test, FAS-Detect ELISA. The test is a signal for identifying FAS that is overexpressed by most cancers and circulates in the blood of cancer patients. The latest grant award supports ongoing work in the refinement of the existing ELISA research test to differentiate FAS derived from cancer from FAS elaborated from normal tissues that occur in some diseases unrelated to cancer.

• Inverness Medical Innovations Inc., of Waltham, Mass., said that San Diego-based Biosite Inc. did not respond to its proposal to acquire Biosite in a cash merger transaction for $90 per share. Inverness made its unsolicited offer in an April 4 letter, which came about a week after Fullerton, Calif.-based Beckman Coulter Inc.'s offer to buy Biosite for $85 per share, a deal valued at about $1.6 billion. At the time of its bid, Inverness said it would bring its offer directly to Biosite shareholders if Biosite's board failed to respond by April 8. (See BioWorld Today, March 27, 2007, and April 6, 2007.)

• MultiCell Technologies Inc., of San Diego, has entered into a long-term agreement with Lundbeck Pharmaceuticals Italy SpA, of Padova, Italy, for the latter to supply one of the active components of MCT-125, MultiCell's Phase IIb drug for chronic fatigue in multiple sclerosis patients. In a Phase IIb trial, MCT-125 significantly reduced the levels of fatigue in MS patients enrolled in the study and reported few if any side effects.

• NanoViricides Inc., of West Haven, Conn., has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington focusing on creating new treatments for dengue fever using virus-killing nanomedicine technology. NanoViricides is a development-stage company that is creating special purpose nanomaterials for viral therapy.