• 7TM Pharma, of Horsholm, Denmark, said its Site Directed Drug Discovery technology enables the company to take a structure-based approach to drug discovery on G protein-coupled, or 7TM, receptors. That approach has resulted in rapid hit generation, or 20 nM hits in three months, the company said. In another project on the MCH1 receptor, the company said it ensured identification of highly potent leads. The company also developed 7TM-BRET, a universal functional 7TM receptor screening assay. 7TM developed ß-arrestin mutants that enhance the BRET signal and thereby increase the assay window several times, it said.

• Affymetrix Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif., said it is taking orders for its GeneChip brand CustomSeq SARS pathogen detection resequencing array, designed to help researchers resequence different isolates of the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome and better understand variations associated with its spread and increased virulence. It resequences the entire 29,700 base pairs in the virus and was designed using sequence from public health centers in Canada, the U.S. and Asia.

• Agenix Ltd., of Brisbane, Australia, said the Phase Ia trial of its blood-clot imaging agent, Thromboview, was on track and that preliminary results indicated that the technology was safe. The technology uses a clot-binding monoclonal antibody attached to a radiolabel. Following injection, the antibody will flow through a person's body and bind to any existing blood clots, which can be picked up by an imaging camera, it said.

• Astex Technology Ltd., of Cambridge, UK, and Schering AG, of Berlin, entered a four-year, multitarget agreement to discover drugs for various therapeutic indications, but focusing on orally available, small-molecule drugs targeting solid tumors. Schering will fund Astex's related research, providing discovery and clinical milestone payments plus sales-based royalties on approved products. Schering will be responsible for clinical development and retains an option for worldwide exclusive marketing rights for all identified compounds. Multiple targets will be selected each year with an option to extend the collaboration for a further four-year term to include additional targets.

• Avanir Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, received from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., a $100,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant to fund initial development of human monoclonal antibodies for human cytomegalovirus infection using its Xenerex technology. The funds cover a portion of the costs of generating a panel of prospective monoclonal antibodies and characterizing them as to neutralizing activity, specificity and affinity to cytomegalovirus.

• Aventis Pasteur, the vaccines business of Aventis SA, of Lyon, France, entered a research, option and license agreement with Vivalis, of Nantes, France. Vivalis will combine its avian stem cell platform with Aventis' Alvac canarypox virus platform in an effort to improve large-scale production of several Alvac vaccine candidates in the fields of HIV and cancer. In addition, the companies signed an option allowing Aventis to use Vivalis stem cell lines for the production of another undisclosed virus vaccine. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• BioAxone Therapeutic Inc., of Montreal, appointed Nigel Brown chairman. Brown is the senior vice president of business planning, technologies and markets at MDS Pharma Services, also of Montreal. Privately held BioAxone is working to develop technologies that target Rho signaling, which is applicable to central nervous system disorders, cancer and related indications.

• Carrington Laboratories Inc., of Irving, Texas, said its wholly owned subsidiary, DelSite Biotechnologies Inc., entered a program to develop water-soluble polymer technology for the controlled release of protein and peptide therapeutics with the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. The program will operate under the direction of the school's department of polymer science.

• CompleGen Inc., of Seattle, received from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., a $300,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant to apply its XenoGene system to the discovery of anti-trypanosomal drugs. Under the Phase I grant, CompleGen will use XenoGene to isolate drug targets from a pair of closely related parasites, Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania spp., and use them to screen synthetic and natural product libraries.

• CytRx Corp., of Los Angeles, was notified by Nasdaq that it successfully met the requirements for continued listing on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market. Previously, the company was granted an extension to meet the minimum bid price requirement.

• DepoMed Inc., of Menlo Park, Calif., received a state of California drug manufacturing license for its pharmaceutical laboratories and manufacturing facilities located at its Menlo Park headquarters. The 10,000-square-foot facility will provide for the manufacture of clinical supplies of Phase I/II gastric retention products, as well as quality control and quality assurance laboratories for Phase I-III products. The gastric retention products are designed to provide once-daily administrations and reduced gastrointestinal side effects.

• Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, reported data at this week's American Association of Immunologists meeting in Denver, demonstrating the relationship between the chemical structure of specific immune-regulating hormones (IRHs) and their ability to regulate inflammation associated with either cell- or antibody-mediated immune responses. The data were produced from an assay in which IRHs were injected into the footpad of a mouse. Seven days later, the lymph node was queried with respect to cell numbers and types (T cells, dendritic cells, B cells), cytokines and antibody production. Results showed that specific chemical modifications of immune-regulating hormone structure can regulate different aspects of the immune system.

• ID Biomedical Corp., of Vancouver, British Columbia, reported preliminary results from the first cohort of a Phase II trial, at the Conference on Vaccine Research in Arlington, Va., showing that its StreptAvax vaccine's immunogenicity was significant and generated antibody responses similar to Phase I results. Results demonstrated that sera taken from subjects vaccinated with StreptAvax show the capacity to support statistically significant increases in the killing, by human white blood cells, of group A streptococci belonging to all 26 bacterial serotypes included in the vaccine.

• Inhibitex Inc., of Atlanta, reported Phase I data from its first study of Veronate, at this week's Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Seattle, demonstrating the antibody-based product's safety. Inhibitex, which is developing Veronate to prevent staphylococcal infections in very low-birth-weight infants, said higher and lower dose levels were well tolerated while health complications commonly observed among such patients occurred with similar frequency in both groups. The study evaluated the drug in two groups of 18 infants who were administered up to four infusions of Veronate. A Phase II study began in January.

• Innogenetics NV, of Ghent, Belgium, reported results of its preclinical evaluation of an anti-inflammatory monoclonal antibody, INNO 202, for the treatment of severe sepsis. Results of the preclinical trial were positive: All six control animals not receiving the monoclonal antibody developed symptoms of severe bacterial sepsis and died early. By contrast, six of the eight animals given the candidate drug survived for seven days or more, which were considered in the study model as long-term survivors. The difference in survival curves between the two groups was statistically significant.

• Medarex Inc., of Princeton, N.J., said Novartis Pharma AG, of Basel, Switzerland, began Phase I trials of a fully human antibody product candidate for autoimmune disease. The clinical advancement of the antibody, the second in clinical development by Novartis created with Medarex's UltiMAb Human Antibody Development System, triggered an undisclosed payment to Medarex.

• MerLion Pharmaceuticals Pte. Ltd., of Singapore, entered a collaboration to discover and develop immunosuppressive and immunomodulating drugs with NovImmune SA, of Geneva. NovImmune will contribute its biochemical and cell-based assays for specific regulators of immune response genes as targets for MerLion to screen against its sample collection. Resulting discoveries will be jointly developed and shared by both parties. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• MWG Biotech AG, of Ebersberg, Germany, entered an agreement to license rights to DNA microarrays based on its Oligo Set technology for Japanese sales to Hitachi Software Engineering, of Tokyo. Initially, Hitachi will use MWG's Oligo Sets of complete human and mouse genomes for its range of microarrays. Additional microarray projects are being discussed as well, the companies said. Financial terms were not disclosed.

• Nexia Biotechnologies Inc., of Montreal, said it laid off about 30 percent of its employees as part of a broader effort to reduce costs and preserve finances because of delays in developing a commercial spinning process for BioSteel. The plan also includes a reduction in farm operations, early research and development programs and cuts in administrative and other expenses deemed nonessential. As a result, Nexia said it would reduce its monthly burn from $1 million to $600,000 in order to extend existing resources until October 2005. Nexia said core activities associated with its BioSteel spinning development program and Protexia program would remain intact.

• Onyvax Ltd., of London, reported preliminary Phase IIa data at this week's American Association of Immunologists meeting in Denver, demonstrating an immune response triggered by its Onyvax-P cancer vaccine. Findings pointed to increases in cytokine production, evidence of T-cell proliferation and a statistically significant decrease in the rate of prostate-specific antigen release in several of the 48 prostate cancer patients in the study. Of the total, the two who have completed the 12-month treatment period showed no signs of disease progression.

• Oxford BioMedica plc, of Oxford, UK, reported data on RetinoStat at this week's Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., confirming the vision loss product's ability to accurately target the retina using the company's LentiVector system. The data, presented in conjunction with the gene therapy group at the Institute of Ophthalmology, were in addition to other jointly reported findings showing that Oxford's hypoxia response element technology focused gene expression in the parts of the retina local to pathological changes associated with age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy - two causes of blindness.

• Phase-1 Molecular Technology Inc., of Santa Fe, N.M., said it is providing toxicogenomics services for the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. The service is designed to provide insights into cancer treatments and the toxicity produced by those agents in comparison to the mechanism of antitumor action. Phase-1 will receive animal tissues from the contract laboratories performing preclinical safety studies for the NCI. The tissues will be evaluated for treatment-related gene expression effects in the laboratories of Phase I.

• QLT Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Novartis Ophthalmics, the eye health unit of Novartis AG, of Basel, Switzerland, reported new data suggesting that Visudyne therapy reduces the risk of vision loss in wet age-related macular degeneration with minimally classic lesions, a form of wet AMD previously considered untreatable. Additional data to support the role of Visudyne in patients with predominantly classic AMD demonstrated that visual outcomes continue to remain stable five years after initiating therapy, providing further evidence of the safety and long-term efficacy of Visudyne. The data were presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology annual meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Separately, QLT reported that the companies were presented with the 2003 Helen Keller prize for Innovation in Eye Care by the Helen Keller Foundation for Research and Education.

• RegeneRx Biopharmaceuticals Inc., of Bethesda, Md., said researchers at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington found that thymosin beta 4, a molecule in clinical trials for wound healing, is present in human tears and appears to decrease with age. RegeneRx said the findings, reported at this week's Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., point to the possibility of TB4's use as a therapeutic for eye disorders, especially in ocular indications that become more frequent with age. RegeneRx is developing TB4 for acute and chronic wounds and for diseases involving tissue and organ repair under an exclusive worldwide license from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.

• Senesco Technologies Inc., of New Brunswick, N.J., and partner Harris Moran Seed Co., of Modesto, Calif., said they reduced and delayed browning in cut lettuce using technology that slows the onset of cell death. The Senesco technology was applied to iceberg and romaine lettuce, both of which browned less as a result of the gene technology which delays plant cell death, or senescence.

• Sunol Molecular Corp., of Miramar, Fla., began a Phase I trial to evaluate the safety of an antibody for EHEC (Enterohemorrhagic E. coli). Initially, healthy volunteers will be given an antibody designed to neutralize one of the two Shiga toxins released by the pathogenic E. coli strains during infection. A second antibody to neutralize the second Shiga toxin is expected to enter a Phase I trial later this year. The program is being conducted in collaboration with the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, a unit of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

• Valent BioSciences Corp., of Libertyville, Ill., entered an exclusive research partnership with the National Research Council of Canada's Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Both parties will investigate agricultural applications of synthetic analogues of abscisic acid, with Valent gaining the first option to license the institute's technology for commercial development on a worldwide basis. More specific financial terms were not disclosed.

• Viventia Biotech Inc., of Toronto, received Swiss regulatory approval to begin a Phase I trial to treat head and neck cancer patients with VB4-845, one of its Armed Antibodies targeted therapeutic drug candidates, designed to deliver potent cytotoxic agents directly to tumors. The study is designed to establish the safety profile, tolerability and pharmacokinetic profile of VB4-845, an antibody fragment conjugated with a toxin that targets a cell surface protein found in most head and neck cancers. The study, to be conducted at the University of Zurich Hospital, also is designed to provide a preliminary assessment of the drug's efficacy profile over an escalating dose range.