• Abiogen Pharma, of Pisa, Italy, began a Phase I/II trial using ABIO 05/01 cells for the treatment of peritoneal carcinosis. It will enroll about 18 patients with advanced tumors who have not responded to existing therapies to evaluate ABIO 05/01's safety in humans and to establish safe dose ranges for further studies.

• Affectis Pharmaceuticals AG, of Munich, Germany, closed a €4 million (US$5.2 million) Series B financing round led by EMBL Ventures, of Heidelberg, Germany. The company said proceeds will be used to advance its drug development programs into the clinic for the treatment of depression. Affectis' lead candidate addresses an ion channel associated with depression that has been validated as a possible target to act faster than existing antidepressants with fewer side effects. Along with the financing, Christof Antz, managing partner of EMBL Ventures, will join Affectis' board.

• Amarin Corp. plc, of London, said the audit opinion of its accounting firm contained a going concern explanatory paragraph. The company, which is focused on the development of drugs for central nervous system disorders, said the announcement does not represent any change or amendment to its financial statements for the past fiscal year.

• Anadys Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, and LG Life Sciences Ltd., of Seoul, South Korea, reported positive data from an ongoing Phase II trial of ANA380 (LB80380) in patients with lamivudine-resistant hepatitis B virus infection at the European Association for the Study of the Liver meeting in Paris. Findings showed that oral administration of ANA380 over 12 weeks reduced DNA viral load by an average of 3.9 log¹⁰ units, or more than 99.9 percent, in lamivudine-resistant patients receiving 90-mg doses in the study.

• Ark Therapeutics Group plc, of London, announced initial results from a Phase II study of EG005 in lipodystrophy in HIV-positive patients. The mean improvement in patients treated with EG005 after three months was approximately twice that of patients receiving placebo. Metabolic profiles, including lipids and insulin, showed changes consistent with the hypothesis that EG005, an angiotensin II inhibitor, increased fat metabolism by increasing the efficiency of mitochondria. In total, 46 patients completed the initial three month study, and the majority of those continued on active treatment in an open-label one-year extension phase.

• Benitec Ltd., of St. Lucia, Australia, and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., formed a licensing agreement covering intellectual property in RNA interference. Alnylam will provide Benitec and its licensees an option to nonexclusively license Alnylam-controlled IP. Once Benitec exercises the option, Alnylam would receive license fees and potential milestone payments and royalties. Benitec also will provide Alnylam with reciprocal options under reciprocal terms to nonexclusively license Benitec IP for expressed RNAi and synthetic siRNAs.

• CeNeS Pharmaceuticals plc, of Cambridge, UK, and Tripos Inc., of St. Louis, reached milestones in their joint research partnership on catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) inhibitors and entered a new agreement to continue their collaboration. Terms of the agreements were not disclosed. The companies have identified several series of compounds active against the target COMT.

• Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics Inc., of Bethesda, Md., and Galapagos Genomics NV, of Mechelen, Belgium, initiated a two-year target discovery alliance. They will apply Galapagos' adenoviral siRNA and cDNA collections and expertise in assay design to discover and validate drug targets to develop new cystic fibrosis therapies. Galapagos will receive €1.3 million (US$1.7 million) from CFFT, and it has the option to develop the targets identified in its drug discovery programs.

• Diatos SA, of Paris, expanded its operations with the opening of a new subsidiary, Diatos USA Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif. Diatos has been operating in the U.S. for some time, with a business representative in the San Francisco Bay Area, but said it wanted a more global presence. Diatos is using its Diatos Peptide Vector intracellular/intra-nuclear delivery technology and its Tumor-Selective Prodrug cancer-targeting technology to develop therapies for cancer and other diseases.

• Inncardio Inc., of New York, a company founded by Bioaccelerate Holdings Inc., formed an agreement with Sigmoid Biotechnologies Ltd., of Dublin, Ireland, for the co-development and licensure of two formulations of established drugs. Once approved, the drugs could achieve combined peak annual sales of more than $1 billion. Terms were not disclosed.

• JPT Peptide Technologies GmbH, of Berlin, said it formed an agreement with Antibodies by Design, a division of MorphoSys AG, of Martinsried, Germany. The deal is to co-market the rapid generation of monoclonal antibodies by Antibodies by Design and the complementary peptide-based services and products from JPT. Each partner will offer the services of the other to its worldwide customers, save for Japan. JPT is a wholly owned subsidiary of Jerini AG, of Berlin.

• KineMed Inc., of Emeryville, Calif., signed a compound evaluation agreement with Sosei Co. Ltd., of Tokyo. KineMed will screen numerous molecules provided by the library of Sosei's Drug Reprofiling Platform using KineMed's in vivo KineMarker Assays. The compounds have completed preclinical development and most have advanced through Phase I or Phase II testing. KineMed will use its assays to determine whether any of the compounds have potential indications other than those for which they originally were developed.

• MedPharm Ltd., of London, won a government grant to develop a topical system for delivering drugs to the nails in the treatment of the fungal infection onchomyosis, and of nail psoriasis. Oral treatments for those diseases are available but they have a poor side effect profile leading to low levels of compliance, it said.

• Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, of Edison, N.J., signed two agreements with Israeli company ProChon Biotech Ltd. The agreements include an equity investment agreement and a research collaboration to develop products combining ProChon's growth factor and cell technology with MTF's allograft and tissue materials. MTF will provide funding for research and development and will have exclusive worldwide rights to supply and distribute the finished products.

• Nonlinear Dynamics Ltd., of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, undertook a large-scale development program to evolve a new biomarker discovery product range. The program will seek the launch of multiple biomarker products to form a solution for the analysis of mass spectrometry and capillary electrophoresis trace data.

• Nuevolution A/S, of Copenhagen, Denmark, signed a drug discovery collaboration in which Nuevolution will use its Chemetics drug discovery technology to find new drug leads on targets provided by Novo Nordisk A/S, of Bagsvaerd, Denmark. Chemetics is designed to allow Nuevolution to generate numbers of target sub-type selective drug leads.

• Panbio Ltd., of Brisbane, Australia, and Corixa Corp., of Seattle, said that Panbio signed an agreement to acquire intellectual property from Corixa that would assist in the development of new assays for the diagnosis of tick-borne diseases, ehrlichiosis and babesiosis. Corixa will receive an undisclosed up-front payment, annual maintenance payments and royalties on future product sales. The agreement also will transfer to Panbio a portfolio of recombinant proteins that are specific to those infections. Panbio will be responsible for all product development and commercialization.

• Pieris Proteolab AG, of Freising, Germany, signed an agreement with the biopharmaceutical unit of Syngenta AG, of Basel, Switzerland, to develop an anticalin-based drug for an indication with high unmet medical need. Anticalins are engineered receptor proteins with antibody-like functions. Pieris will be responsible for research and for providing active biopharmaceuticals, while Syngenta will be responsible for preclinical and clinical development and commercialization. Neither the specific indication nor the financial terms were disclosed.

• Sareum Holdings plc, of Cambridge, UK, extended its collaboration with Cancer Research Technology Ltd., of London, the technology transfer arm of the medical charity Cancer Research UK. Sareum is providing structure-based drug discovery services to accelerate development of small molecules that fit Cancer Research's targets.

• Senesco Technologies Inc., of New Brunswick, N.J., and Rahan Meristem Ltd., of Israel, announced that field trials of Senesco/Rahan banana plants have shown increased tolerance to the Black Sigatoka disease, as measured on an index of tolerance. Those field data corroborate earlier findings that the Factor 5A technology confers resistance to fungal pathogens by preventing premature plant cell death. In addition to the banana disease tolerance data, the companies previously showed both an increase in banana fruit shelf life and increase in growth rates of banana plants in field trials.

• Synt:em, of N mes, France, has established clinical proof of concept in humans of its Pep:trans technology for transporting drugs across the blood-brain barrier. Pep:trans is a peptide vector comprising a series of peptide-derived molecules that permit the design of new chemical entities through conjugation to known drugs or new compounds. The company tested it for the delivery of morphine 6 glucoronide, an active metabolite of morphine developed by Synt:em.

• Syntarga BV, of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, is raising money in a first round of financing to fund development of its linker technologies for oncology products and to establish partnerships. The financing round was led by Aglaia Oncology Fund with BioPartner Start-Up Ventures as co-investor. Founded in 2002, Syntarga is a spin-off from the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Radboud University in Nijmegen.

• Xenova Group plc, of Slough, UK, entered a licensing agreement for the glioblastoma multiforme treatment TransMID with PharmaEngine Inc., of Taipei, Taiwan, for the Chinese and South Korean markets. Xenova will receive an up-front payment, milestone payments and royalties on potential future sales. Xenova also retains manufacturing rights, while PharmaEngine will hold exclusive rights to develop, market and sell TransMID in China and South Korea.