By Randall Osborne

West Coast Editor

A year after entering a $70 million financing arrangement with Acqua Wellington North American Equities Fund Ltd., Cytogen Corp. has filed to offer 10 million shares at about $2.50 each, or a total of $25 million worth.

Cytogen¿s stock (NASDAQ:CYTO) closed Friday at $2.38, down 10 cents.

Princeton, N.J.-based Cytogen said it will use the proceeds, raised as needed by the sale of shares, for research and development, including proteomics work, as well as sales, marketing and general corporate purposes.

¿It¿s way too early to say [exactly],¿ said Michael Becker, investment relations officer with Cytogen. ¿This is more of proactive activity on the part of the company.¿

In the agreement with Acqua Wellington, of New York, Cytogen got $6 million right away and set up an equity financing facility for up to $70 million to advance its proteomics work. Cytogen¿s subsidiary, AxCell Biosciences Corp., teamed with InforMax Inc., of Bethesda, Md., to design a protein pathway information source called the Inter-Functional Proteome Database, renamed ProChart and launched June 1. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 11, 2000.)

Cytogen already markets Quadramet for cancer-related bone pain; BrachySeed, a second-generation system of radioactive seed implants for prostate cancer; and the diagnostics ProstaScint, for prostate cancer, and OncoScint, for ovarian and colorectal cancer.

¿We¿re preparing to launch our third product of the year,¿ Becker told BioWorld Today. That product is yet another version of BrachySeed.

¿We¿ve really beefed up sales and marketing,¿ he added. ¿There are a lot of top-line revenue opportunities we¿ll have available at the end of this year that we didn¿t have last year.¿

The company bought Allendale, N.J.-based Prostagen Inc. in June 1999 to regain its exclusive proprietary rights for immunotherapy to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), and entered into a joint venture with Progenics Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Tarrytown, N.Y., to develop PSMA technology for vaccine and antibody-based therapies for the treatment of prostate cancer. Prostagen had licensed PSMA technology to Cytogen in January 1997. (See BioWorld Today, June 17, 1999.)

Abgenix Inc., of Fremont, Calif., has joined the other two firms in the prostate-cancer effort, aiming to use its XenoMouse to develop human monoclonal antibodies in three forms: a naked antibody, antibodies linked to toxins and radiolabeled antibodies.

Late last year, Cytogen acquired U.S. marketing rights for two novel magnetic resonance imaging agents, Combidex and Code 7228. The former, intended for lymph node imaging to detect metastatic cancer, has won approvable status from the FDA, and Code 7228 has completed a Phase I trial with positive results.