• Acambis plc, of Cambridge, England, established a sales, promotion and distribution organization in North America by acquiring a travel vaccine business, Berna Products Corp. of Coral Gables, Fla., for $8.4 million cash. The acquisition will establish a sales, promotion and distribution infrastructure in North America for the expected launch of Acambis' yellow fever vaccine, Arilvax, expected this year. Acambis has acquired 100 percent of BPC and might pay another $3.75 million in milestones between 2004 and 2006. The milestones are linked to Vivotif, a typhoid vaccine, and Arilvax.

• Advanced Viral Research Corp., of Yonkers, N.Y., said Shalom Hirschman stepped down from the position of CEO, president, chief scientific officer and director of the company in order to devote his full efforts to the office of chief scientist for the company. Hirschman had been the principal officer of the company for the previous six years. The company said it will immediately initiate a search for a new CEO. The company is developing Product R, which represents a biopolymer chemistry that processes immunomodulator activity.

• Biotech Holdings Ltd., of Vancouver, British Columbia, said it is negotiating production, sales and marketing for its product, Sucanon, for diabetes and related markets in Mexico and Peru. Sucanon also is called Diab II in Peru and China, where it is approved for Type II diabetes. Sucanon is an insulin receptor sensitizer.

• Cell Genesys Inc., of South San Francisco, reached an agreement with the pharmaceutical division of Japan Tobacco Inc., of Tokyo, regarding about $16.8 million in clinical and patent-related milestone and wind-down payments from their former agreement for GVAX cancer vaccines. The deal was terminated in October 2002. Japan Tobacco will pay Cell Genesys about $8.3 million in cash and waive $8.5 million in future repayment obligations for capital expenditures associated with Cell Genesys' manufacturing facilities in Hayward, Calif., and Memphis, Tenn. In December 1998, Cell Genesys and Japan Tobacco entered a collaboration for GVAX cancer vaccines that was focused on the development of GVAX prostate cancer and lung cancer vaccines. The 1998 agreement was reduced in scope in November 2001 to focus primarily on GVAX lung cancer vaccines. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 21, 1998, and Oct. 21, 2002.)

• Chiron Corp., of Emeryville, Calif., said that two "small explosions" occurred outside two of Chiron's buildings in Emeryville early Thursday. A minor amount of property damage occurred and there were no injuries. The company has contacted law enforcement agencies and authorities have conducted a search for suspicious material. The company said it does not yet know the cause of the incidents.

• GlycoFi Inc., of Lebanon, N.H., and Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., said they re-engineered the glycosylation pathway in the yeast Pichia pastoris. Published in the latest issue of Science, the results detail the first fungal organism able to secrete a human glycoprotein with complex human glycosylation. The work was funded in part by a grant received from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program.

• GPN Network Inc., of Scottsdale, Ariz., said that effective Thursday, the company's name was changed to IR BioSciences Holdings Inc. It is the parent company of ImmuneRegen BioSciences Inc., a research and development biotechnology company, and its stock will begin trading under the new ticker symbol on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board as "IRBH." ImmuneRegen's patents and continued substance P research are derived from discoveries made during research funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in the early 1990s.

• IMI International Medical Innovations Inc., of Toronto, signed a collaborative research agreement with AtheroGenics Inc., of Atlanta. IMI's cardiovascular risk assessment test, Cholesterol 1,2,3, will be added to AtheroGenics' international ARISE trial, providing IMI with primary-event data and exposure to leading cardiac centers worldwide. The ARISE study (aggressive reduction of inflammation stops events) will be conducted in more than 180 cardiac centers in the U.S., Canada, the UK and South Africa. ARISE is a Phase III study designed to evaluate the impact of AGI-1067, an oral anti-inflammatory agent developed by AtheroGenics to target atherosclerosis.

• Immtech International Inc., of Vernon Hills, Ill., filed to sell up to 1.5 million shares from time to time. It plans to use any funds raised for general corporate purposes, including research and development and commercialization efforts. Immtech's work includes DB289, an oral drug being developed for treatment of infectious diseases.

• Inologic Inc., of Seattle, said the FDA granted orphan drug designation for Inologic's lead compound for treating patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). Inologic is developing a new class of compounds designed to target the cause of CF.

• Inpharmatica Ltd., of London, extended its two-year collaboration with Serono SA, of Geneva, Switzerland, originally formed in July 2001 and then expanded in January. The extension provides funding for a team of Inpharmatica scientists to develop and apply its computational chemogenomics system, PharmaCarta, to identifying proteins. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• Lilly ICOS LLC, of Bothell, Wash., a joint venture of Eli Lilly and Co., and ICOS Corp., said Cialis, an oral PDE5 inhibitor for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, was approved in Mexico and is now available by prescription. A new drug application for Cialis is on file with the FDA. (See BioWorld Today, July 3, 2003.)

• Nabi Biopharmaceuticals, of Rockville, Md., submitted supplemental data and information to the FDA on its Nabi-HB intravenous antibody product biologic license application. The BLA has been filed for the prevention of hepatitis B disease in liver transplant recipients who are positive for hepatitis B virus. Nabi-HB intravenous is a sterile solution of human antibodies to HBV, formulated and packaged specifically for intravenous use.

• Nutrition 21 Inc., of New York, said results of a trial in Type II diabetes revealed a potential mechanism that might explain the ability of chromium picolinate to improve insulin resistance in human skeletal muscle. The data suggest that when chromium picolinate is added to the diet, insulin sensitivity improves for people with diabetes. The findings were presented at the 18th International Diabetes Federation Congress in Paris. Research suggests that the potential in vivo mechanism of chromium picolinate on insulin action in human skeletal muscle might occur by increasing the activation of Akt phosphorylation, an intracellular insulin dependent protein that facilitates the uptake of glucose into cells. Nutrition 21's stock (NASDAQ:NXXI) rose 69 cents Thursday, or 130.1 percent, to close at $1.22.

• Oxford BioMedica plc, of Oxford, UK, said that Cancer Research UK agreed to conduct and sponsor an open-label Phase II trial with Oxford BioMedica's cancer immunotherapy product, TroVax, in colorectal cancer patients who have liver metastases. The trial will include 20 patients with Stage IV colorectal cancer who are to undergo surgery for resectable liver metastases.

• Sygen International plc, of London, said it will receive about $1 million in funding from the Bionational Industrial Research and Development, or BIRD, foundation to conduct research into disease resistance and mortality in poultry. The research is expected to last 18 months. The focus of the project will be to identify and sequence genes that increase susceptibility to certain diseases, which in turn increases mortality rates in poultry. It is a collaboration between Sygen and Yissum, the technology transfer company of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

• Syn X Pharma Inc., of Toronto, finalized an agreement with Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics Inc., a unit of Johnson & Johnson, of New Brunswick, N.J., centered on a pivotal trial for the first in vitro diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease. The diagnostic uses glutamine synthetase as a marker and was licensed to Ortho in October. The agreement provides financial support to Syn X for the completion of an ongoing trial that might be submitted to the FDA for approval, it said.

• Temple University in Philadelphia reported that treatment with the new immunosuppressant drug everolimus, from Novartis Pharmaceuticals, is significantly more effective in reducing the severity and incidence of serious complications in heart transplant patients than the current therapy, according to a study in the Aug. 28, 2003, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The study was designed to target the impact of everolimus on certain complications, such as acute rejection and cardiac allograft vasculopathy (also known as chronic rejection). More than 600 cardiac transplantation patients were enrolled in the study.

• The Immune Response Corp., of Carlsbad, Calif., reported that due to the Labor Day holiday and procedural delays in processing sales of its Class A warrants, the company has extended the redemption date for the warrants from Sept. 3 to Sept. 8. The company also granted a "broker-protect" period through Sept. 26 to allow for the processing of paperwork in connection with the exercise of the warrants.

• Transgenomic Inc., of Omaha, Neb., entered securities purchase agreements with a group of investors for proceeds of $4.5 million. The principal purchasers were two of its largest institutional investors. Fahnestock & Co. Inc., of New York, served as placement agent. Transgenomic provides research tools and related consumable products to the life sciences industry for the synthesis, separation, analysis and purification of nucleic acids and a variety of nucleic acid-based specialty chemicals.

• Xcyte Therapies Inc., of Seattle, initiated a Phase I/II trial evaluating the use of Xcellerated T Cells to treat patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Xcyte received a $1.1 million Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., to help fund the trial. Xcyte has developed its Xcellerate technology to activate and grow large numbers of T cells outside of the body for administration to patients with a range of diseases.