¿ Cephalon Inc., of West Chester, Pa., completed its acquisition of Group Lafon, of Maisons Alfort, France, originally announced in early December. Cephalon paid $450 million for the company and now controls worldwide rights to Provigil, a sleep disorder therapy. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 4, 2001.)

¿ Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Boulder, Colo., said it received gross proceeds of $3 million from the sale of 750,000 shares, and issued five-year warrants good for the purchase of 75,000 shares at an exercise price of $5 per share. The proceeds will be used to fund research and development, to provide working capital and for general corporate purposes. The proceeds are in addition to the $9.5 million offering announced Nov. 29, to bring total proceeds to $12.5 million. ABN AMRO Inc. served as financial adviser and placement agency for the financings.

¿ Hybrigenics SA, of Paris, selected the RapXtract technology, developed by Prolinx Inc., of Seattle, for automated preparation of Hybrigenics¿ production sequencing samples. The RapXtract 384 Dye Terminator Removal Kit is the first 384-well method for this application that can be fully automated, the company said. It is distributed by Merck Eurolab, a division of Merck KGaA, of Darmstadt, Germany. The RapXtract product line is based on optimized, superparamagnetic particle technology that eliminates the use of centrifugation, vacuum filtration, or modified primers to achieve separation.

¿ SangStat Medical Corp., of Fremont, Calif., filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue securities up to an aggregate amount of $100 million. The company expects that any net proceeds from the sale will be used for repayment of existing debt and general corporate purposes. The company focuses on developing products for the transplantation, immunology and hematology/oncology markets.