• Glucon, of Boulder, Colo., was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,846,288 for the use of photoacoustic waves originating in a specific region to calculate the concentration of glucose in the blood vessel.

• Innocoll Inc., of Aston, Pa., said its wholly owned subsidiary, Syntacoll AG, was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,855,860, titled "Composite Dressings for Treatment of Wounds," covering a product comprising collagen-based composite material designed for the treatment of deep wounds.

• Medicure Inc., of Winnipeg, Manitoba, was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,867,215, "Cardioprotective Phosphonates and Malonates," covering composition of matter claims for its second-generation anti-ischemic compounds for cardiovascular disease.

• Nanogen Inc., of San Diego, was issued U.S. Patent No. 6,864,071, titled "Multiplex amplification and separation of nucleic acid sequences using ligation-dependent strand displacement amplification and bioelectronic chip technology." The company also received U.S. Patent No. 6,867,048, titled "Multiplexed Active Biologic Array," relating to a method of addressing one or more electrodes across multiple rows and columns of a microarray.

• NanoHorizons Inc., of State College, Pa., was awarded a patent covering the company's deposited thin-film system for high-throughput small-molecule mass spectrometry. The QuickMass-enhanced targets use matrix-less and thin-layer matrix test technique.

• Northwest Biotherapeutics Inc., of Bothell, Wash., received U.S. Patent No. 6,863,887, titled "Therapeutic and Diagnostic Applications Based on the Role of the CXCR4 Gene in Tumorigenesis," to protect antibodies to a protein believed to play a role in cancer.

• NVE Corp., of Eden Prairie, Minn., was issued U.S. Patent No. 6,875,621, titled "Magnetizable Bead Detector," relating to the detection of magnetizable beads in connection with biological and chemical assays.

• Oxford BioMedica plc, of Oxford, UK, received a notice of allowance for a patent containing claims covering modifications to lentiviral vectors that improve safety and efficacy.

• ParAllele Bioscience Inc., of South San Francisco, received U.S. Patent No. 6,858,412, covering its Molecule Inversion Probe technology. The patent is owned by Stanford University and is exclusively licensed to ParAllele.

• Pluristem Life Systems Inc., of Haifa, Israel, received a notice of allowance for its patent, "Method of Producing Undifferentiated Hemapoietic Stem Cells Using a Stationary Phase Plug Flow Bioreactor."

• Proneuron Biotechnologies Inc., of Los Angeles, received U.S. Patent No. 6,844,314 for the use of Copolymer-1 for protection from neuronal degeneration. The patent is exclusively licensed to Proneuron and owned by Yeda Research and Development Co. Ltd., the commercial arm of the Wiezmann Institute of Science.

• Quark Biotech Inc., of Fremont, Calif., was granted a notice of allowance for a patent titled, "p53 inhibitors and therapeutics use of the same," covering the method of reversibly inhibiting p53 for a sufficient time to allow normal cells in a host to recover from a stress-inducing event.

• Senesco Technologies Inc., of New Brunswick, N.J., was issued three patents: U.S. Patent No. 6,867,237, titled, "DNA Encoding Apoptosis-Induced Eukaryotic Initiation Factor-5A and Deoxyhypusine Synthase and A Method for Controlling Apoptosis in Animals and Humans"; U.S. Patent No. 6,849,782, titled, "Arabidopsis Antisense Deoxyhypusine Synthase Molecule and Method of Inhibiting Deoxyhypusine Synthase Expression in Plants"; and U.S. Patent No. 6,855,529, titled, "DNA Encoding A Plant Deoxyhypusine Synthase, A Plant Eukaryotic Initiation Factor-5A, Transgenic Plants and a Method for Controlling Senescence and Programmed Cell Death in Plants."

• Symphogen A/S, of Copenhagen, Denmark, was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,489,259 for the development of recombinant polyclonal antibodies, known as symphobodies, to treat and prevent allergic reactions.

• Vical Inc., of San Diego, received U.S. Patent No. 6,867,195, covering the use of cationic lipid-mediated delivery of DNA for both immunization and delivery of biologically active proteins.

• Zila Inc., of Phoenix, was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,830,743, an additional patent for its Tolonium Chloride product covering the use of certain compounds in detecting dysplastic tissue.

• Zonagen Inc., of The Woodlands, Texas, received U.S. Patent No. 6,861,415, covering both compositions of matter and methods of use for Progenta, in development for the treatment of uterine fibroids and endometriosis.