• Amersham Biosciences, the life sciences business of Amersham plc, of London, launched the AKTAxpress protein-purification system at the Pittcon 2004 meeting in Chicago. The company said the product delivers automated, high-throughput, multistep purification of His- and GST-tagged proteins.

• Australian Cancer Technology Ltd., of Sydney, Australia, opened its U.S. headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. Its U.S. division, known as ACT (USA) Inc., plans to employ 15 to 20 people by the end of this year. The parent company is developing pharmaceuticals and other technologies directed toward the unmet needs of cancer patients.

• Benitec Ltd., of Queensland, Australia, launched its siStrike vectors, a new line of gene-silencing products that mediate RNA interference using Benitec's DNA-directed RNA interference (ddRNAi) technology. Developed by Promega Corp., of Madison, Wis., the vectors are the first products to emerge from a worldwide exclusive licensing agreement between the companies reported last spring.

• Beta-02, which is planning to establish offices in Kiryat Ariyeh, Petach-Tivka, Israel, completed a $2 million seed financing round. Vitalife, an Israeli life sciences venture capital fund, led the round in which Heznek, the seed fund of the government of Israel, also participated. It is the first joint investment of Vitalife and Heznek. Beta-02 develops technology to supply oxygen to transplanted cells, and its first application will be to supply oxygen to islet cells.

• BioVision AG, of Hannover, Germany, entered a licensing agreement with F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., of Basel, Switzerland, regarding BioVision's patent on the Differential Peptide Display technology that is designed to allow visualization of the peptides and small proteins within a sample and to analyze changes within the peptidome. The license allows Roche to use the patent nonexclusively for in-house purposes.

• Cellectis SA, of Paris, relocated its laboratories and headquarters to a new facility in Romainville. The company now has more than 16,000 square feet within Biocitech technology park. Cellectis is focused on applying the technology of meganuclease recombination systems to in vivo genome engineering and genome surgery.

• Celltech Group plc, of Slough, UK, said a study published in this month's online issue of Pediatrics showed that once-daily Metadate CD (methylphenidate HCI) extended-release capsules was more effective than Concerta (methylphenidate HCl, Johnson & Johnson) during the morning hours when given to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder during the school day. The study, which compared the effects of the two extended-release methylphenidate formulations, showed that the treatments were similar in efficacy during the afternoon. Also, Celltech Pharmaceuticals, a unit of Celltech Group, and Dendrite International Inc., of Morristown, N.J., signed an international services agreement. Celltech will use Dendrite's Pharbase, a physician and health care organization database, and the ForcePharma sales effectiveness application for its home-office personnel, regional managers and representatives in Europe. Dendrite will provide implementation services, training, asset management, multilingual help-desk services and software maintenance to users in the UK, Scandinavia, Spain, France and Germany. Dendrite will continue to provide services to Celltech's U.S. sales force.

• Exponential Biotherapies Inc., of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, said its food safety division signed a contract with CatchMabs BV, of Wageningen, the Netherlands, for the large-scale commercial production of bacteriophages. Exponential has developed an approach to controlling bacterial pathogens in the food supply, enabling food producers to protect their products without agents such as antibiotics. CatchMabs will leverage its production capacity to produce the bacteriophages. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• The German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology said they will invest €30 million in cooperative ventures in the biotech sector over the next few years. Each side will contribute €15 million to the program, which will be known as Bio-DISC (Deutschland-Israel Cooperation). In addition, the ministries pledged to mobilize €20 million from the private sector to support the venture. The program will concentrate on small and medium-sized companies and on improving technology transfer from basic research into commercial applications. In medicine and biology, German and Israeli basic researchers have been working together for more than 20 years, and in 2000 the two ministries agreed to steer cooperation toward applied research.

• Intercell AG, of Vienna, Austria, acquired a manufacturing plant in Livingston, Scotland, to make the company's late-stage Japanese encephalitis vaccine. Capacity at the center might also be used to manufacture additional vaccines coming out of Intercell's research pipeline. The company declined to disclose financial details of the transaction. The facility had been opened in June 2002 by its previous owner, Excell Biotech Ltd., of Livingston, Scotland, which invested about $10.3 million in its construction. Intercell specializes in vaccines against infectious diseases and has raised more than €100 million in private investment since its founding in 1998.

• MediGene AG, of Martinsried, Germany, restructured its shareholding to increase available cash by about €16 million. About one-third of the total will come in a private placement with Techno Venture Management, which was the lead investor in MediGene's third round of private financing in September 1998. Another third will come from increasing the number of shares sold on the public markets, while the final third will come from the sale of convertible bonds. The company said the issue will increase cash on hand to about €40 million. Preliminary figures for 2003 showed that the company lost €31 million on revenues of €2 million. Its forecasts for 2004 project revenues of €8 million, narrowing the loss to €15 million, with €10 million cash on hand at the end of the year.

• Microscience Ltd., of London, said clinical results demonstrated the safety and immunogenicity of its new oral vaccine, which is intended to protect against the infectious enterotoxigenic E. coli disease, the most common cause of travelers' diarrhea. The dose-escalating, open-label study showed that after a single dose, 50 percent of the volunteers mounted high levels of immune responses against a known protective antigen of the disease. After two doses, the response rate rose to 70 percent.

• MorphoSys AG, of Munich, Germany, said it would generate antibodies against a target molecule involved in autoimmune diseases selected by its partner, Centocor Inc., a unit of Johnson & Johnson, of New Brunswick, N.J. MorphoSys will use its HuCAL Gold technology within the scope of its collaboration with Centocor, which will carry out preclinical and clinical development and subsequent marketing of resulting products. MorphoSys stands to receive licensing and milestone payments, in addition to royalties, though more specific financial terms were not disclosed. The agreement dates back more than three years.

• MWG Biotech AG, of Ebersberg, Germany, undertook the sequencing work as part of a project in which the whole genome of Saccharopolyspora erythraea was sequenced by Aventis Bulk SpA, the Italian affiliate of Aventis SA, of Strasbourg, France. The complete genomic sequence will form the basis for new approaches in strain development methodologies, and the whole sequence is the property of Aventis Bulk.

• Onyvax Ltd., of London, said it was granted a U.S. patent for its prostate cancer vaccine Onyvax-P, covering the combined use of three human prostate tumor cell lines in a single vaccine. Onyvax-P is in Phase II trials.

• Pluristem Life Systems Inc., of Haifa, Israel, said it is pursuing mergers and acquisitions of cord blood banks in the U.S. It is in negotiations with more than one U.S.-based cord blood bank, it said. Pluristem is focused on developing stem cell expansion technologies.

• ThromboGenics Ltd., of Dublin, Ireland, and Geymonat SpA, of Catania, Italy, formed a collaboration to co-develop PIGF (placental growth factor), a drug candidate that has shown potential to treat ischemic heart disease. ThromboGenics will bring its exclusive rights to the therapeutic applications of PIGF to the collaboration, while Geymonat will bring its exclusive rights to the intellectual property that characterizes the protein sequence of PIGF.

• Xcellentis, of Ghent, Belgium, a wholly owned subsidiary of Innogenetics NV, reported top-line results from its open-label Phase II trial of LyphoDerm for the treatment of hard-to-heal venous leg ulcers. The study involved 193 patients. Patients treated with LyphoDerm (a human keratinocyte lysate in a topical formulation) were compared to controls receiving standard of care alone or standard with a topical formulation. Xcellentis' international advisory board defined the standard of care as compression therapy with a hydrocolloid dressing. The primary endpoint was the incidence of complete wound closure within 24 weeks, irrespective of ulcer recurrence during the trial. Results indicated that patients treated with LyphoDerm showed a 43 percent relative improvement over controls (p=0.11). The number of patients achieving 100 percent wound closure with LyphoDerm was 38 percent.

• Y's Therapeutics Co. Ltd., of Tokyo, and Abmaxis Inc., of Mountain View, Calif., entered an agreement for the development of a human monoclonal antibody drug targeting a specific antigen that is overexpressed in many types of tumors. The antigen is associated with autoimmune diseases. Abmaxis will discover high-affinity human antibodies specific to the antigen and Y's will undertake further development of the products. Abmaxis gains rights to manufacture and market the antibody in China, while Y's retains rights in the U.S., Europe, Japan and the rest of the world.