• AMDL Inc., of Tustin, Calif., said Jade Pharmaceutical Inc., the registration agent in China for AMDL, has submitted an application with the China State Food and Drug Administration (SDFA) to market the DR-70 cancer test. Also, the company said the acquisition of Jade Pharmaceuticals Inc. (JPI) and its two wholly owned China-based subsidiaries for an aggregate of about 13.7 million pre-reverse split shares of AMDL is scheduled to close on Sept. 28. The closing of the acquisition and the reverse split are expected to enable AMDL to remain in compliance with the applicable listing standards for American Stock Exchange.

• Can-Fite BioPharma, of Petach Tikva, Israel, entered an exclusive license agreement with a Japanese pharmaceutical company, Seikagaku Corp., to develop and market CF101 in Japan for inflammatory indications including rheumatoid arthritis but not including ophthalmic indications. Can-Fite could receive about $19.5 million, according to agreed milestones, and would collect royalties on the sale of CF101 in Japan. Within the agreement, the Japanese company was granted exclusive license to develop and market CF101 for inflammatory diseases in the Japanese market. Can-Fite will immediately receive a $3.5 million payment.

• eGene Inc., of Irvine, Calif., completed a successful application study demonstrating that its HDA-GT12 Genetic Analyzer can detect H5N1 avian influenza to as few as 10 viral RNA copies. The test used H5N1 avian influenza primers provided by the Genome Institute of Singapore.

• EpiCept Corp., said that on Sept. 20, Nasdaq notified the company that it does not comply with the continued listing requirements of the Nasdaq Global Market because the market value of the company's listed securities has fallen below $50 million for 10 consecutive days. It has 30 days to comply. EpiCept focuses on pain and cancer.

• Lexicon Genetics Inc., of The Woodlands, Texas, was awarded funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to identify targets for developing drugs to enhance the restorative benefits derived from sleep and offset problems associated with sleep deprivation. Financial terms of the one-year award were not disclosed. Lexicon will be investigating the molecular and cellular basis of sleep, sleep pathways and the correlation between sleep architecture and performance, including under conditions of sleep deprivation.

• Rx3 Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, was awarded two new grants totaling $1.5 million. The first award will fund developing antibacterial agents that inhibit more than one enzymatic target simultaneously. The second award, which is a two-year grant, will be used to discover compounds that inhibit specific cell wall targets and that act synergistically in combination with certain existing antibiotics.

• UCB SA, of Brussels, Belgium, plans to acquire Schwarz Pharma AG, of Monheim, Germany, for cash and shares. The offer for each Schwarz share would be €50 ($63.73) in cash and 0.8735 of one new ordinary share in UCB, valuing each Schwarz share at €91.1 based on the closing price of a UCB share on Sept. 22. The offer values the share capital of Schwarz at about €4.4 billion. It is a 20.4 percent premium to the closing price of €75.65 per Schwarz Pharma share on Sept. 22. The Schwarz family, owning about 60 percent of the issued share capital of Schwarz, has committed to accept the proposed offer and to hold at least 41.5 percent of the UCB shares they receive until after June 2010.