• Acambis plc, of Cambridge, UK, reported a change in the ratio of its American depository receipts, which are traded on Nasdaq. Since listing on Nasdaq in February 2001, Acambis' ADR price has risen from about $18 to around $60. In order to bring the price in line with other ADRs, the company will change the ratio from one ADR for 10 ordinary shares to one ADR for two ordinary shares. Acambis ADR holders on record as of Feb. 20 will be issued four additional ADRs for every ADR held. There is no change to Acambis' ordinary shares; its primary listing will continue to trade on the London Stock Exchange. Acambis is a developer of vaccines to prevent and treat infectious diseases.

• Acrux Ltd., of Melbourne, Australia, and Vivus Inc., of Mountain View, Calif., reported the execution of exclusive licensing agreements under which Vivus will develop and commercialize Testosterone MDTS and Estradiol MDTS in the U.S. for treatment of low sexual desire and menopausal symptoms, respectively. Vivus will pay to Acrux combined licensing fees of $3 million over the next 17 months, payments up to $4.3 million for achievement of certain clinical development milestones, product approval milestones of $6 million and royalties on net sales in the U.S. upon commercialization of each product.

• Affitech AS and the Norwegian Radium Hospital, both of Oslo, Norway, received a grant of NOK6.2 million (US$905,000) from Norway's National Functional Genomics program (FUGE) to continue their research on the development of new cancer therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics. Affitech is developing antibody-based approaches to cancer therapy, while its partner is using tumor antigens to stimulate T-cell responses.

• Antisoma plc, of London, was awarded a patent covering the combination of AS1404, a vascular-targeting agent, with drugs of the taxane class. The product is in its third Phase I study, and Antisoma will evaluate the compound in various drug combinations and begin trials in at least two types of cancer in 2004.

• Cambridge Antibody Technology Group plc, of Cambridge, UK, said that Wyeth, of Madison, N.J., exercised an option to license CAT's antibody phage display libraries for in-house use. The libraries will support Wyeth's activities in therapeutic antibody drug discovery and development across a range of therapeutic areas. The option to license CAT's libraries was granted to Wyeth as part of the collaboration agreement entered in March 1999. The agreement at the time was expected to mean up to $70 million to CAT.

• Cancer Research UK, of London, was awarded a European patent on the hereditary breast cancer gene BRCA2, and said it will make the patent freely available to public laboratories in Europe. That mirrors its action in the UK, where it already holds the BRCA2 patent.

• Cellectis SA, of Paris, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Tarrytown, NY, signed a licensing agreement granting the U.S. company a nonexclusive worldwide license to use Cellectis' homologous recombination technology for the specific replacement or insertion of a gene in the mouse genome. Regeneron is to incorporate the technology in its Velocigene platform, which is designed to produce modification of a target gene through the customization and manipulation of DNA sequences, thus accelerating the production of knockout and transgenic expression models without the use of either positive/negative selection or isogenic DNA. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• Chiron Inc., of Emeryville, Calif., was granted an injunction at the High Court in London protecting its UK employees and premises from harassment and protests by animal rights activists. The order creates exclusion zones around the company's facilities in London, Liverpool and Oxford and around the homes of employees. Chiron has been targeted in the UK, the U.S. and Holland by protesters active in Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which is campaigning to close the animal testing company Huntingdon Life Sciences plc, of Cambridge.

• Defiante Farmaceutica LDA, a subsidiary of Sigma-Tau Group, of Rome, and BioDelivery Sciences International Inc., of Newark, N.J., entered exclusive negotiations. The parties intend for Defiante to incorporate BioDelivery's Biroal drug delivery technology into a new formulation of aspirin. The companies are negotiating for a license agreement to develop, manufacture, promote, distribute, sell and sublicense products containing the aspirin chochleates for all applications.

• Elan Corp. plc, of Dublin, Ireland, completed the sale of its European sales and marketing business to Medeus Pharma Ltd., a new UK pharmaceutical company backed by Apax Partners Fund. Elan has realized total consideration of about $120 million from the transaction, previously reported on Dec. 23. About 180 employees of Elan's European sales and marketing business will transfer their employment to Medeus. Separately, Elan said it expects to complete the sale of certain rights to two products in the UK and Ireland for about $10 million during the first quarter of 2004.

• Evotech OAI AG, of Hamburg, Germany, entered a collaboration with Toray Industries Inc., of Tokyo, to identify drug candidates that interact with a target found by Toray's genomic drug discovery project. Evotec will begin with structural simulations to study interactions with the target and will carry optimization through to in vitro assays. Toray will pay for Evotec's services and make milestone payments based on success. Further financial details were not disclosed. Toray Industries is a chemical company and part of the Toray Group of nearly 200 companies.

• Galapagos Genomics NV, of Mechelen, Belgium, was awarded by the Flemish Institute for the Promotion of Industrial Scientific-Technological Research a €1.4 million technology development grant in Belgium for Alzheimer's disease research. Galapagos will build a number of Alzheimer's disease assays using neuronal cells and will use them in combination with its adenoviral-based target discovery platform.

• The German Ministry of Education and Research started a program to support sequencing the genomes of domesticated animals. The program, known by the acronym FUGATO, is intended to reduce defects in animal husbandry and improve the quality of agricultural production. It will support sequencing for animals including pigs, cattle, sheep, poultry, horses and honeybees. The program will run eight years with an annual budget of €2 million.

• GPC Biotech AG, of Martinsried, Germany, said it achieved a milestone in its osteoarthritis alliance with Aventis SA, of Strasbourg, France. Aventis selected a validated target, which will be moved into high-throughput screening by Aventis to identify compounds for the treatment of osteoarthritis. GPC identified the target, as well as a number of other potential targets, using its technologies. The milestone triggers an undisclosed payment to GPC. The alliance with Aventis was initiated in 1999.

• Merck KgaA, of Darmstadt, Germany, and ChemBridge Research Laboratories LLC, of San Diego, accomplished their first collaboration project. In August, ChemBridge entered a contract research agreement to provide its discovery research capabilities to Merck. ChemBridge scientists synthesized multiple series of focused libraries under application of its high-throughput medicinal chemistry platform to complement Merck's in-house finding efforts. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• Micromet AG, of Munich, Germany, began a Phase II trial with MT201, an antibody targeting the Ep-CAM antigen. The trial will evaluate the compound in post-operative prostate cancer patients who have increased concentrations of serum prostate-specific antigen. Micromet said that Ep-CAM's broad expression suggests MT201 has the potential to improve the treatment of a range of solid tumors. The trial follows a dispute concerning MT201 with a former partner. (See BioWorld International, Feb. 4, 2004.)

• PharmaMar, a Madrid, Spain-based cancer company, sales personnel will be hired by Cell Therapeutics Inc., of Seattle, which is expanding its European commercial operations. PharmaMar closed the sales activities it had established after its initial cancer product failed to gain European marketing approval late in 2003. The company said it expects to have about 16 fully trained, field-based country managers and sales representatives in eight major market countries selling Trisenox, which gained European Commission approval in March 2002 for acute promyelocytic leukemia.

• PPL Therapeutics plc, of Edinburgh, UK, sold intellectual property relating to recombinant Bile Salt Stimulated Lipase (recBSSL) for the treatment of impaired digestion and absorption of fat to Arexis AB, of Gotenborg, Sweden, for £140,000 (US$263,862) in cash. In advance of the sale, PPL terminated its recBSSL collaboration with AstraZeneca plc, of London. PPL also sold the farm where it kept transgenic sheep used in the production of human proteins for £800,000. The company, creator of Dolly the cloned sheep, was forced into dissolution after partner Bayer Biologics put PPL's lead program alpha-1-antitrypsin on hold in June, and investors subsequently refused to support a restructuring plan.

• Progen Industries Ltd., of Brisbane, Australia, began a Phase II study evaluating its lead compound, PI-88, in lung cancer patients. The trial is the third of four Phase II trials the company is planning to conduct. The trial will involve 90 patients to test PI-88 in combination with Taxotere for the treatment of advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. The company said the PI-88 program is exploring synergies between the anti-angiogenic nature of PI-88 (a VEGF, FGF-1, FGF-2 and heparanese inhibitor) and Taxotere (Aventis Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Bridgewater, N.J.).

• Proteome Sciences plc, of Cobham, UK, was awarded a €438,000 grant as part of a €7.5 million three-year study of patients' responses to drugs for mood disorders and depression. The study, part of the European Union Sixth Framework research program, will involve a large-scale, multicenter human pharmacogenomics analysis to find new drug targets and diagnostic biomarkers, and identify ways to predict if patients will respond to antidepressant treatments. That follows the announcement of a £419,000 (US$789,707) grant to Proteome from the UK government to discover biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease.

• ReGen Therapeutics plc, of London, raised £500,000 (US$942,367) in a placing of 18.2 million shares at 2.75 pence per share, with new and existing investors. Funds will be used for further studies of the mode of action of Colostrinin, the company's treatment for Alzheimer's disease, and to develop a manufacturing process for the compound, originally derived from ovine colostrum. Further Phase II trials are expected to start around the end of 2004, by which point ReGen hopes to have found a development partner. The company raised £750,000 in December.

• Virax Holdings Ltd., of Melbourne, Australia, said that its research partner, the Australian National Centre for HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, presented data and released results of the recent clinical trial of Virax's immune-based therapy VIR201 at the 11th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco. The study found that patients on VIR201 had a viral load about six times lower than those on placebo. VIR201 is a treatment vaccine that is designed to harness the power of the body's immune system.