¿ Cytran Inc., of Kirkland, Wash., promoted William Milligan to president and CEO. Milligan has served as Cytran's president and chief operating officer, and succeeds Dennis Fill as CEO.

¿ Endovasc Ltd., of Montgomery, Texas, said results from a safety study of Liprostin in porcine hearts indicated the compound was safe in treating restenosis. The study indicated Liprostin administered using single bolus of up to 2.5 mg at the time of angioplasty in models having blocked arteries produced a safe treatment of restenosis, with only an 8 percent rate of restenosis at 28 days after treatment. The company said it will progress into Phase II and Phase III trials as a result of the testing.

¿ Eyetech Pharmaceuticals Inc., of New York, named Thomas Burns president and chief operating officer. Burns is the former vice president of global business strategy and general manager of the Refractive Business Unit at Bausch and Lomb.

¿ Innovase LLC, a joint venture between the Dow Chemical Co., of Midland, Mich., and Diversa Corp., of San Diego, appointed John Burr president. Burr is the former vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Genencor International Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif.

¿ Pain Therapeutics Inc., of South San Francisco, completed patient enrollment for an additional Phase II trial of PTI-601 for treatment of moderate pain. The 350-patient, placebo-controlled trial will evaluate the safety and efficacy of the compound vs. placebo and tramadol.

¿ PowderJect Pharmaceuticals plc, of Oxford, UK, initiated clinical testing designed to support the development of a DNA immunotherapeutic for treatment of hepatitis B. The program is part of a collaboration on DNA vaccines with GlaxoSmithKline plc, of Brentford, UK. The companies entered the collaboration in 1998, and at the time it was valued at about $321 million. The 24-patient trial is designed to evaluate a number of different vaccination parameters. (See BioWorld Today, March 5, 1998.)

¿ PPL Therapeutics plc, of Edinburgh, Scotland, said it has demonstrated the possibility of producing multipotential stem cells without using an embryo intermediate. The company said its U.S. subsidiary, PPL Therapeutics Inc., was able to derive beating myocardial cells from skin cells via a multipotential stem cell intermediate. PPL said the novelty in its approach is to "revert" fully differentiated skin cells into stem cells and then transform those cells into cells of another type. The work was done in bovine cells using funding from the U.S. government under its Advanced Technology Program. PPL's managing director, Ron James, presented the discovery at a meeting of the British Fertility Society in London on Friday.