• BioClin Research Laboratories Ltd., a research services start-up formed by ex-Elan Corp. plc. employees, closed on €400,000 in seed financing. The company, based in Athlone, Ireland, has leased premises from Elan at its Monksland campus, and is offering preclinical and Phase I bioanalytical and project management services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. The company founders, CEO Mary Burke and Scientific Director Brian McKenna, were, respectively, senior director of clinical pharmacology and associate director of bioanalysis at Dublin-based Elan, and they have recruited several other Elan alumni to the fledgling company. McKenna said Ireland is at present the company's main source of business, while it also is running studies in the U.S. It will also seek opportunities in the UK and on mainland Europe, primarily in areas such as mass spectrometry and immunochemistry.

• Inpharmatica Ltd., of London, said it entered a nonexclusive ADME service agreement with Ionix Pharmaceuticals Ltd., of Cambridge, UK, to optimize leads in Ionix's analgesic products portfolio. No financial details were given.

• NeuroSearch A/S, of Ballerup, Denmark, said its partner, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, of Ingelheim, Germany, extended the development program for NS2330, a drug candidate in development for Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, to Japan. It has commenced Phase I clinical trials in both indications there. It is already undergoing Phase II clinical trials in Europe and the U.S.

• Oxford BioMedica plc, of Oxford, UK, said it received a further U.S. patent covering its LentiVector gene vector technology. The patent complements an earlier U.S. patent, and covers the method of production whereby all the viral genes are removed from a lentivirus, rendering it safe for use in gene delivery.

• PharmaMar SA, the drug development arm of Madrid, Spain-based Zeltia SA, said it would appeal the July 24 decision by the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products of the London-based European Medicines Evaluation Agency not to grant marketing authorization for Yondelis in advanced soft tissue sarcoma. "The company has filed to appeal this opinion because we continue to believe strongly that Yondelis has shown benefit in patients suffering from this difficult-to-treat tumor. It is the first new active agent in STS in the last 20 years, and we will work with the regulatory authorities to bring it to the market," company Chairman Jose Maria Fernandez Sousa-Faro said.

• Pyrosequencing AB, of Uppsala, Sweden, entered an exclusive licensing deal with 454 Life Sciences, a majority-owned subsidiary of CuraGen Corp., of New Haven, Conn., for whole-genome applications of its pyrophosphate-based sequencing technology, including karyotyping, genotyping and determining sequence-based expression. Pyrosequencing retains rights for all other applications. Over the five-year term of the deal, the Swedish firm will receive a minimum of US$4.5 million in up-front payments and royalties. 454 Life Sciences also has taken out an option to maintain its exclusive license for the remaining lifetime of the patents, at a cost of US$500,000 to US$1 million per year. Earlier this month, Pyrosequencing said it would acquire chemistry automation specialist Personal Chemistry i Uppsala AB.

• Xerion Pharmaceuticals AG, of Martinsried, Germany, licensed bacterial expression technology from XOMA Ireland Ltd. Xerion will have rights to use XOMA's antibody expression technology to develop antibody products derived from phage display libraries. Xerion also has an option to license antibody production under XOMA's patents. Furthermore, both companies will have options to co-develop and commercialize antibody products made by the German company under the license. Xerion is a drug development company, founded in 1998. XOMA Ireland is a subsidiary of XOMA Ltd., of Berkeley, Calif.