¿ Arriva Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Alameda, Calif., signed an agreement to develop and commercialize the synthetic matrix metalloprotease inhibitor Ilomastat, also known as Galardin, for the treatment of inflammatory respiratory diseases.

¿ Avigen Inc., of Alameda, Calif., said the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Act statutory waiting period has expired with respect to its $60 million agreement with Bayer Corp., of Pittsburgh, concerning Avigen's coagulin-B gene therapy treatment for hemophilia B. The expiration triggers an up-front payment of $15 million from Bayer to Avigen. (See BioWorld Today, Nov. 20, 2000.)

¿ Boston Probes Inc., of Bedford, Mass., granted a five-year, nonexclusive license to Gene Therapy Systems Inc., of San Diego, for the sale of its GeneGrip life science research products that incorporate PNA technology. Gene Therapy will pay Boston Probes an up-front fee, minimum annual royalties as well as earned royalties from product sales.

¿ DUSA Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Wilmington, Mass., said independent investigators in the United Kingdom initiated a new study using DUSA's Levulan photodynamic therapy following balloon angioplasty in the treatment of narrowed or blocked superficial femoral arteries.

¿ GenVec Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md., obtained an exclusive license to pigment epithelium-derived factor from Northwestern University for all ocular gene therapy applications. The license covers methods invented by investigators at the university for inhibiting abnormal blood vessel formation.

¿ GLYCODesign Inc., of Toronto, said scientific collaborators at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital have discovered a new molecular system that can modulate immune responses. The study was sponsored in part by GLYCODesign. The findings were published in the current issue of Nature.

¿ HTS Biosystems Inc., of Hopkinton, Mass., signed a nonexclusive license exchange agreement with Dyax Corp., of Cambridge, Mass., under which Dyax will receive premarket access to HTS's grating-coupled surface plasmon resonance array system. Dyax will grant HTS a patent license to use its proprietary phage display technology for the generation of antibody chip products for the HTS system, for which Dyax would receive royalties on sales.

¿ IGT Pharma Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, and NTB Neurotrophic Bioscience Inc., of Toronto, said they received binding subscription agreements from existing investors for the financing of their planned merger into Prescient NeuroPharma Inc. Due to market conditions, timing and on the advice of their investment bankers, the companies agreed to waive the minimum of C$10 million in concurrent financing and complete the merger with subscriptions totaling C$5.5 million. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 30, 2000.)

¿ Medicure Inc., of Winnipeg, Manitoba, filed a Form 20-F registration statement with the SEC and will become a reporting issuer, under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, effective March 31, and will have rights similar to U.S. public companies in promoting the purchase of its securities in the U.S. at that time.

¿ Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Tustin, Calif., said its president and CEO, John Bonfiglio, has taken a leave of absence. Edward Legere, a member of the board of directors, has been appointed the interim president and CEO.

¿ PharmaSeq Inc., of Monmouth Junction, N.J., entered a strategic partnership with Mitsui and Co., of Japan, under which PharmaSeq receives a multimillion-dollar equity investment from Mitsui. PharmaSeq is developing laser light-powered microchips and related instruments for multiple applications in gene diagnostics, drug discovery and proteomics.

¿ Photogen Technologies Inc., of Knoxville, Tenn., said its registration statement on Form S-3 has been declared effective by the SEC. The shelf registration permits it to issue up to $40 million of its common stock at its discretion during the next two years at prices to be negotiated. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 26, 2000.)

¿ SkyePharma plc, of London, signed a contract with Kowa Ltd., of Nagoya, Japan, for the scale-up and manufacturing of Phase III clinical batches of Kowa's new lipid-lowering agent, NK-104. SkyePharma will be responsible for providing materials for the European and Unites States clinical trials at its FDA-inspected production facility near Lyon, France.