• Altana AG, of Bad Homburg, Germany, completed the €4.6 billion (US$6.1 billion) sale of Altana Pharma AG and its entire pharmaceuticals business to Nycomed A/S, of Roskilde, Denmark. The pharmaceutical divestiture ends the company's involvement in two areas of business, which focused on gastrointestinal and respiratory therapeutics, and going forward, it will focus on specialty chemicals.

• Crucell NV, of Leiden, the Netherlands, signed a cross-licensing deal with Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck & Co. Inc., in which Merck will be able to use Crucell's technology on an exclusive basis in undisclosed vaccine fields and Crucell gains access to Merck's manufacturing technology for its AdVac-based vaccines. Crucell said that deal will help speed up the delivery of its malaria and tuberculosis vaccines. Both of those programs are based on Crucell's adenovirus vector technology, AdVac, and are in Phase I trials.

• pSivida Ltd., of Perth, Australia, entered into an exclusive negotiation period with a major global pharmaceutical company to acquire a worldwide royalty bearing license to make, use and sell products using pSivida's drug delivery technologies. The pharmaceutical company will make payments totaling $990,000 to pSivida for the right to exclusively negotiate a licensing agreement for three months and to fund the cost of a preclinical study.