¿ Acambis plc, of London, formed an alliance with Swiss Serum and Vaccine Institute Berne, of Berne, Switzerland. Acambis granted Berna an exclusive sales and marketing license for an oral typhoid vaccine in all territories outside the United States and Canada. Berna will fund all process development and supply of clinical trial materials and will manufacture the vaccine and supply it to Acambis for sales in the U.S. and Canada. The companies will have equal control of, and share in, the costs of the remaining trials of the vaccine. Berna has granted Acambis exclusive sales and marketing rights in the U.S. and Canada to sell Berna's oral cholera vaccine - Orochol Berna - in combination with Acambis' oral typhoid vaccine, and they will work toward regulatory approval for the combination vaccine. The companies will explore other travel vaccines that can be included within this alliance's framework.

¿ Celltech Group plc, of Slough, UK, received an approvable letter from the FDA for Metadate CD extended-release capsules, a once-daily treatment for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The product was developed using Milan, Italy-based Eurand International S.p.A.'s Diffucaps technology, and Eurand will receive manufacturing fees and royalties based on product sales if approved.

¿ Charles River Laboratories International Inc., of Wilmington, Mass., priced its public offering of 7 million shares at $19 per share, for gross proceeds of $133 million. Of the shares, 3.5 million are being sold by the company and 3.5 million by stockholders. The joint lead managers are Credit Suisse First Boston, of New York, and Lehman Brothers, of New York. Underwriters have an overallotment option on 1.05 million shares. On the day of the offering's announcement in February, the company's stock closed at $24.85. The stock (NYSE:CRL) moved up 65 cents Friday, to close at $20.

¿ Echelon Research Laboratories Inc., of Salt Lake City, received a Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the NIH, of Bethesda, Md. The two-year, $940,000 grant is for developing methods for delivery of signaling molecules into cancer cells. Echelon focuses on molecules shown to regulate signal transduction in cell biology, and it provides specific signaling lipids to scientists.

¿ Gene Logic Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md., and Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, part of The Procter & Gamble Co., of Cincinnati, as part of their osteoporosis collaboration, discovered 63 new gene targets. The targets will be further assessed to determine their viability in bone drug development. The companies formed the collaboration in 1997 to discover targets for three diseases, two of which were undisclosed at the time, in a deal worth up to $75 million, or roughly $25 million per disease. In 1998, they extended the deal for the second indication, osteoporosis, and included access fees for Gene Logic's READS gene expression technology and milestone payments of $1.5 million to $2.5 million per year if Gene Logic hits its milestone of 10 targets identified annually, starting with the second year. (See BioWorld Today, June 16, 1997, and Dec. 15, 1998.)

¿ ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Costa Mesa, Calif., said the European Commission granted orphan drug status designation in the European Union to intravenous ribavirin (Virazole; 100 mg/ml) for the treatment of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.

¿ IGEN International Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md., sold 789,075 shares of common stock for $9.5 million to Acqua Wellington North American Equities Fund Ltd. under an equity financing agreement struck last month covering the sale of up to $60 million of IGEN's stock over 28 months. IGEN said it would use the proceeds for research and development, product manufacturing, working capital and/or general corporate purposes. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 13, 2001.)

¿ Large Scale Biology Corp., of Vacaville, Calif., is a partner in a joint U.S. Navy and National Institutes of Health research project focusing on non-embryonic human stem cell research. A letter to President Bush signed by more than 20 senators and members of Congress stated that Large Scale would produce a stem cell growth factor, identified in the joint effort, using its patented tobacco plant-based technology.

¿ PPL Therapeutics plc, of Edinburgh, Scotland, is proposing an open offer and international offering to raise up to #45 million (US$64.2 million), before expenses, through an issue of new ordinary shares. Deutsche Bank AG, of London, has the option to pick up an additional 2.7 million new ordinary shares to cover overallotments. The company said it would use the funds to progress and develop its protein antibody and peptide product pipeline, fund its regenerative medicine platform and strengthen its financial position.

¿ Unigene Laboratories Inc., of Fairfield, N.J., said it orally delivered a parathyroid hormone analogue in preclinical studies for osteoporosis. Unigene was able to achieve significant blood levels of parathyroid hormone in an animal model and said this should allow for the development of an oral product that can deliver therapeutic doses of PTH.