• Albany Molecular Research Inc., of Albany, N.Y., was awarded a contract valued at up to $3 million by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to manufacture potential treatments for substance abuse. The company will provide chemical manufacturing of bulk drug substances for use in preclinical and clinical trials, based on specific task orders issued by NIDA during the three-year term of the contract.

• Cardiome Pharma Corp., of Vancouver, British Columbia, said its independent Data Safety Monitoring Board recommended the company continue its ACT 1 Phase III trial, which is evaluating intravenous RSD1235 for acute atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter. The recommendation was based on a second planned safety analysis of data from 180 patients. ACT 1 will enroll about 360 patients for atrial fibrillation, with another 60 enrolled for atrial flutter in a subset called Scene 2. The company expects results to be available in the fourth quarter.

• Curis Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., said the current issue of Brain Research contains an article describing studies in which administration of BMP-7 stimulated dopamine levels in a preclinical model of Parkinson's disease. The company noted that such findings add another neurological disorder for which the signaling protein could be a drug development candidate. BMP-7 has been implicated in the development of the brain and the maintenance of certain nerve cell structures.

• Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Chadds Ford, Pa., said data from two pilot studies reported at the joint meeting of the American Pain Society and the Canadian Pain Society in Vancouver, British Columbia, suggest that Lidoderm (lidocaine patch 5 percent) might reduce pain intensity and common pain qualities associated with low-back pain and osteoarthritis. Other data from the same conference, reported in conjunction with development partner SkyePharma plc, of London, detailed four studies of DepoMorphine (morphine sulfate sustained-release liposome injection), a late-stage product for the management of postoperative pain. Data from one study showed that patients given DepoMorphine following knee-replacement surgery reported lower pain intensity scores 48 hours after the procedure than those treated with intravenous patient-controlled analgesia.

• Ercole Biotech Inc., of Research Triangle Park, N.C., and novosom AG, of Halle, Germany, completed the first phase of their research collaboration, which involves the intracellular targeted delivery of Ercole's alternative splicing oligonucleotides by using novosom's Smarticles delivery system. They said the results confirmed the effectiveness of Smarticles in targeting Ercole's splice-switching drug to specific organs while reducing the total quantity of oligonucleotides required to produce the desired effect.

• Evotec OAI AG, of Hamburg, Germany, expanded its in vitro and in silico ADMET platform, EVOprofile. The product assists its customers in profiling drug candidates with respect to their pharmacokinetic, physiochemical, safety and toxicological properties.

• Forest Laboratories Inc., of New York, said Phase III data reported at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in New York demonstrate that patients treated with Namenda (memantine HCl) and a stable dose of donepezil maintain significantly higher functional abilities, such as grooming and toileting, and exhibit improved behavioral symptoms, including irritability and agitation, when compared to patients receiving donepezil and placebo. That analysis is based on the results of a study recently reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

• Genelabs Technologies Inc., of Redwood City, Calif., reported data from its hepatitis C virus drug discovery program at the International Conference on Antiviral Research in Tucson, Ariz. The company's scientists described data on several nucleoside compounds that are inhibitors of HCV replication in a cell-based replicon system, with anti-HCV activity shown at concentrations as low as 0.09 micromolars. The compounds also were shown to be highly selective in their activity, with concentrations necessary to observe toxicity to human liver cells exceeding 50 micromolars.

• Isotechnika Inc., of Edmonton, Alberta, submitted a clinical trial application to Canadian regulatory authorities to begin Phase I trials of TAFA-93, a prodrug of the mTOR inhibitor Rapamycin. The company said TAFA-93 is designed to reduce the unfavorable pharmacokinetics and side effects of Rapamycin, which belongs to a class of drugs that are used in preventing organ rejection in transplantation, for treating autoimmune and oncological diseases and as a component of coated stents for coronary artery disease. Preclinical studies have demonstrated equivalent efficacy to Rapamycin in a rat heart transplant model, while maintaining one-third lower blood exposure to Rapamycin.

• New River Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Radford, Va., filed for a $57.5 million initial public offering. The specialty pharmaceutical company, which is working to develop improved versions of widely prescribed drugs through its Carrierwave technology, applied for listing on the Nasdaq National Market under the ticker symbol "NRPH." It has yet to determine the number of shares planned for sale or their price.

• PharmaNetics Inc., of Raleigh, N.C., said its common stock would be traded on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board as "PHAR" after being delisted from the Nasdaq SmallCap Market May 13 as a result of its failure to meet the stockholders' equity, market value of securities or minimum net income listing requirements. The company develops products to monitor the effect of antithrombotic agents in patients being treated for angina, myocardial infarction, stroke, and pulmonary and arterial emboli.

• Pieris Proteolab AG, of Freising, Germany, was awarded €2 million from the German Ministry of Education and Research. The company will use the funding, payable over two years, to validate therapeutic Anticalins in preclinical development and to develop manufacturing processes against several biological targets in oncology and cardiovascular diseases. Pieris said it generated Anticalins against many protein and hapten targets with high affinity and specificity, and it has demonstrated therapeutic efficacy against Digoxin overdosing in a preclinical study.