• Aastrom Biosciences Inc., of Ann Arbor, Mich., reported that the exercise price of the warrants issued to a group of institutional investors was $1.65 per share of common stock, rather than the $1.42 per share of common stock, as originally stated by the company Monday. The warrants were issued by Aastrom to the institutional investors who purchased 8 million shares through a registered direct offering from an existing shelf registration statement, for aggregate gross proceeds of about $9.1 million. At the corrected exercise price, the warrants could generate about $4 million, if exercised.

• AGY Therapeutics Inc., of South San Francisco, said it raised $9 million through an extension of its Series C round of financing. The company has now raised a total of $68 million since its inception in 1998. AGY Therapeutics' ImAGYne platform is designed to define the intra-and extra-cellular signaling pathways that underlie the pathological progression of central nervous system diseases.

• Avant Immunotherapeutics Inc., of Needham, Mass., signed an agreement with Adprotech Ltd., of Cambridge, UK, for nonexclusive rights to use certain components of Avant's intellectual property surrounding complement inhibition. The license will enable Adprotech to further development and commercialization of its APT070 product, which is in a clinical trial in rheumatoid arthritis. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed, but it includes up-front license fees, milestone payments and royalties.

• Cell Therapeutics Inc., of Seattle, said a study published in the April issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the combination of arsenic trioxide and ATRA (anthracycline) induction therapy resulted in faster time to achieve complete remission and longer-lasting remissions than either of the drugs used alone. Researchers at Shanghai Institute of Hematology, the University of Paris and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York conducted the study. All 20 cases in the combination group remained in complete remission after a median follow-up of 18 months, while seven of 37 patients treated with a monotherapy relapsed. Cell Therapeutics markets Trisenox (arsenic trioxide) injection in the U.S. and Europe.

• Columbia Laboratories Inc., of Livingston, N.J., said that a study investigating the pharmacokinetics of Striant (testosterone buccal system) and testosterone gel concluded that Striant offered physiological testosterone replacement in testosterone-deficient men comparable to the gel. In addition, levels of a testosterone metabolite associated with prostate enlargement, dihydrotestosterone, were significantly lower with Striant, the company said. The study was published in Current Medical Research and Opinion.

• Cypress Bioscience Inc., of San Diego, said the underwriters of its recently reported public offering notified Cypress that they will exercise their option to purchase an additional 900,000 shares to cover overallotments. As a result, a total of 6.9 million shares will be sold at the closing of the public offering, which was expected to occur Wednesday. Gross proceeds are expected to be about $74.6 million. Cypress Bioscience is focused on providing products for the treatment of patients with functional somatic syndromes.

• FASgen Inc., of Baltimore, received a $2.4 million grant award from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., for the second part of a study of FASgen's compounds for their antitumor efficacy in ovarian cancer. During part one of the research, FASgen identified six small-molecule FAS inhibitors that it said provided a scientific basis for formal drug development. C-75, the company's index compound, also has produced positive results in an 18-month study of HER2/neu transgenic female mice that developed FAS-positive breast cancer during the last quarter of their first year.

• Genentech Inc., of South San Francisco, said a three-judge panel upheld a 2002 decision denying claims against the company by Chiron Corp., of Emeryville, Calif. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the 2002 judgment concerning Chiron's U.S. Patent No. 6,054,561. Chiron said Genentech infringed the patent with its metastatic breast cancer drug, Herceptin (trastuzumab), but the courts said the claims were invalid. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 10, 2002.)

• Introgen Therapeutics Inc., of Austin, Texas, began a Phase II trial of INGN 241 in patients with metastatic melanoma. The drug's active component, Mda-7/IL-24, is a tumor-suppressor gene that exhibits tumor-selective apoptosis and immune-stimulating and angiogenesis-inhibiting activities. The company has completed Phase I trials of INGN 241 in a variety of cancers. The Phase II trial will enroll up to 25 patients at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. They will be treated with an intratumoral injection of INGN 241 to see if there is biological activity or toxicities.

• LION bioscience AG, of Heidelberg, Germany, said GlaxoSmithKline plc, of London, renewed its license for SRS and SRS Objects. With the renewals, which were received by the company in the third quarter of fiscal year 2003/2004, GSK expanded its collaboration with LION and has the license to use the LION technology globally. Financial details were not disclosed. SRS is a scalable data-integration platform.

• Medicure Inc., of Winnipeg, Manitoba, reported preliminary results from its Phase II study that showed a positive trend in diabetic hypertensive patients. MC-4232, a combination product incorporating MD-1 and an ACE inhibitor, is being developed for the treatment of patients with diabetes and hypertension, in addition to patients with essential hypertension. The initial 15-patient Phase II trial tested MC-1 alone in diabetic hypertensive patients. Of the 11 patients who completed the 14-week study, the group showed a 4.9 percent reduction in glycated hemoglobin compared to baseline HbA1c.

• Nanogen Inc., of San Diego, sold 900,000 shares of stock to institutional investors at $8.60 per share for gross proceeds of about $7.7 million, of which net proceeds are expected to be about $7.4 million. The sale was conducted pursuant to Nanogen's shelf registration filed in January and increased by 150,000 shares on April 6. The sale was expected to close Wednesday. The net proceeds are planned for working capital and other corporate purposes, including funding of acquired businesses and technologies.

• Neurocrine Biosciences Inc., of San Diego, announced positive Phase III results from trials evaluating two formulations of indiplon, an immediate-release and a modified-release version, in elderly patients with chronic insomnia. The modified-release version demonstrated highly statistically significant improvements as measured over eight hours by polysomnography in wake after sleep onset after the first two nights of dosing. Secondary endpoints of total sleep time, sleep efficiency, wake time during sleep and latency to persistent sleep also were statistically significant, as compared with placebo. The immediate-release version demonstrated that the incidence of adverse events was similar to what had been observed previously. Patients also reported sleep benefit during the six-month treatment period. The company's clinical studies have included more than 7,000 subjects to date. The company is in the process of filing new drug applications for both formulations. (See BioWorld Today, March 1, 2004, and March 25, 2004.)

• Peninsula Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Alameda, Calif., reported the results of a preclinical study comparing nebulized doripenem to tobramycin in a murine model of acute, severe Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia. The study reported that doripenem demonstrated a greater efficacy in reducing bacterial load, compared to tobramycin. Therefore, Peninsula said doripenem is a candidate for clinical development as an inhaled antibiotic to manage pulmonary infections caused by P. aeruginosa or other susceptible pathogens in humans.

• Prana Biotechnology Ltd., of Melbourne, Australia, said results supporting the company's theory that metals in the brain, rather than proteins, are responsible for the pathology of Alzheimer's disease were published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The article demonstrates that zinc plays a central role in the formation of amyloid plaques not only at the nerves but also in the blood vessels of the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

• Savient Pharmaceuticals Inc., of East Brunswick, N.J., initiated a Phase II study of Puricase, a polyethylene glycol conjugate of uricase (urate oxidase), in the treatment of severe refractory gout. The multicenter study will assess Puricase in patients with hyperuricemia and symptomatic severe refractory gout. Subjects selected for the study were not adequately treated by the conventional therapy, allopurinol, or are intolerant of it.

• Senesco Technologies Inc., of New Brunswick, N.J., said preclinical studies showed that its gene, Eukaryotic Initiation Factor 5A1, induced cell death in lung cancer tumors of mice, while healthy tissue remained unaffected. The company conducted the studies using mice with the same genetic defect that causes lung cancer in humans.

• SkyePharma plc, of London, achieved a $5 million milestone payment for successfully completing a Phase II trial of Propofol IDD-D as a maintenance therapy of anesthesia in adults during surgery. The product, which is licensed in North America to Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Chadds Ford, Pa., is expected to enter Phase III trials around the middle of the year. Propofol IDD-D is a 2 percent intravenous formulation of propofol that employs SkyePharma's Insoluble Drug Delivery technology. The Phase II study provided evidence of efficacy and safety in 79 female patients undergoing laparoscopic gynecological surgery.

• Symbollon Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Framingham, Mass., plans to acquire certain assets related to iodine drug development from Memetix Inc. and other related parties. Symbollon will pay for the assets with 425,000 shares of Symbollon's Class A common stock. The assets include data from three clinical trials using iodine to treat women with fibrocystic breast disease.

• Xenova Group plc, of Slough, UK, signed a 10-year agreement with Genzyme Ltd., part of Genzyme Corp., of Cambridge, Mass., leasing to it the vacant space in the Cambridge Science Park site in the UK. Genzyme will establish its first European discovery research facility on the site this month. Xenova will continue to occupy part of the UK site together with its adjacent manufacturing facility. Genzyme's research activities in Cambridge will focus on antibody technology and its application in renal disease, oncology and immune-mediated diseases.