¿ Abbott Laboratories, of Abbott Park, Ill., said the 30-day waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act for U.S. government review of Abbott's pending acquisition of BASF Pharma's pharmaceutical business has expired.

¿ Access Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Dallas, completed and released initial data from a 400-patient, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial of OraDisc, its canker sore treatment, an amlexanox formulation in a polymer disc designed to adhere to the disease site. Access said evaluable patients reached the primary clinical endpoint, complete healing by day five. The company anticipates completing enrollment for a second Phase II trial evaluating OraDisc's ability to prevent the onset of the ulcerative phase of the disease within the next two months.

¿ AltaRex Corp., of Waltham, Mass., said it will apply its antigen-targeted antibody approach to the treatment of chronic hepatitis B. Its scientists will conduct proof-of-concept experiments in its laboratories with Lorne Tyrell, of the University of Alberta.

¿ Axys Pharmaceuticals Inc., of South San Francisco, received a $1.5 million milestone payment from Merck & Co. Inc., of Whitehouse Station, N.J., for meeting a pre-agreed milestone in the development of a compound being studied for use in the treatment of osteoporosis.

¿ Cellegy Pharmaceuticals Inc., of South San Francisco, said it intends to file a new drug submission with the Therapeutic Products Programme in Canada requesting marketing approval for Anogesic (nitroglycerin ointment), a treatment for chronic anal fissures. The decision to file earlier than the company expected follows a meeting with the TPP. Cellegy also intends to accelerate its filing of a new drug application with the FDA.

¿ Cognetix Inc., of Salt Lake City, received a $100,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Health Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, of Bethesda, Md. The grant will support the efforts of Cognetix to investigate the potential of a conopeptide-based treatment for asthma.

¿ Cognia Corp., of Mountain View, Calif., said it entered an alliance with Biobase GmbH, of Braunschweig, Germany, and Harvard Medical School. The deal grants the researchers access to Cognia and Biobase bioinformatics products.

¿ Columbia Laboratories Inc., of New York, entered an equity financing with Acqua Wellington North American Equities Fund Ltd., of New York, for up to $20 million. Over the next 24 months, Columbia may, at its discretion, sell shares of its common stock to Acqua Wellington at a small discount to market price to be determined before each sale. Selling the shares is subject to certain conditions, including market price, and the financing facility is not subject to minimum takedown requirements.

¿ Curacyte AG, of Munich, Germany, said it completed a seed round of capital financing of EUR7 million (US$6.5 million). The financing was led by TVM Techno Venture Management GmbH, of Munich, and included a consortium of European life sciences investors. The newly founded company focuses on an oncology platform based on the discovery of biochemical entities that play a role in tumorgenesis. The company also is developing an antisense therapy in diseases with concurrent immunodysregulation and a thrombocytopenia therapeutic.

¿ Demegen Inc., of Pittsburgh, said researchers reported at the National Institutes of Health Topical Microbicides Pre-Clinical Workshop III in Baltimore that the activity of the Demegen peptide D2A21, when mixed with modified lipid, is better than five other peptides tested against herpes simplex viruses. That activity, it said, is maintained at only 10 percent of the concentration of D2A21 needed without the lipid.

¿ Digene Corp., of Gaithersburg, Md., said it filed a registration statement with the SEC for a public offering of 2.5 million shares, 2.125 million of which will be offered by Digene. The remaining 375,000 shares will be offered by selling stockholders. Goldman, Sachs & Co., SG Cowen Securities Corp., and ABN AMRO Rothschild LLC, all of New York, are managing the offering. Digene develops, manufactures and markets proprietary DNA and RNA testing systems for the screening, monitoring and diagnosis of disease, including human papillomavirus, chlamydia, gonorrhea and blood viruses.

¿ DoubleTwist Inc., of Oakland, Calif., completed a release of its Annotated Human Genome Database that incorporates more than 3 billion human DNA base pairs and additional proprietary data. The company said the upgraded database offers customers a more complete view of the human genome.

¿ LumiCyte Inc., of Fremont, Calif., entered a multimillion-dollar agreement with Kratos Analytical Ltd., of Manchester, UK, under which Kratos will supply mass spectrometers to support LumiCyte's protein biochip data aggregation facilities worldwide. Kratos will supply a minimum of 105 AXIMA-CFR systems in the next 30 months and will invest in the development of specialized biochip readers to be used exclusively by LumiCyte.

¿ Millenia Hope Inc., of Montreal, said its flagship anti-malarial drug, Malarex, showed excellent results in in vitro testing.

¿ Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., said a Phase II clinical trial of LDP-02, a humanized monoclonal antibody for treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, is now under way in Canada. The randomized, multicenter, placebo-controlled, double-blind study is designed to determine the safety and efficacy of LDP-02 in patients with ulcerative colitis.

¿ MorphoSys AG, of Munich, Germany, achieved the first milestone in the therapeutic part of its collaboration with Bayer AG, of Leverkusen, Germany. MorphoSys delivered a tailored, high-affinity HuCAL antibody for an undisclosed target and triggered a payment from Bayer. The antibody will now move into preclinical development at Bayer, and Bayer exercised an option for the development of a HuCAL antibody against another target molecule, triggering an additional payment. Financial details were not disclosed.

¿ Neurocrine Biosciences Inc., of San Diego, said it has developed potent orally active compounds for modulation of gonadotropin-releasing hormone. The company is evaluating the small-molecule compounds in preclinical investigation to determine their potential as treatments for reproductive disorders such as endometriosis and prostate cancer.

¿ NicOx SA, of Sophia-Antipolis, France, said data from its positive preclinical study of its patented NO-releasing chemopreventive agents, including a new series of NO-derivatives of aspirin and sulindac, were presented at the 11th International Congress on Anti-Cancer Treatment in Paris. The NO-releasing drugs were up to 2,500 times more effective than their parent compounds in reducing the growth of colon and pancreatic cancer cells in vitro.

¿ Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Boulder, Colo., and Chiron Corp., of Emeryville, Calif., initiated a Phase II trial evaluating Angiozyme as a treatment for breast cancer. The open-label study is expected to be the first in a series of clinical trials initiated in 2001 investigating the clinical activity of Angiozyme in metastatic breast, colorectal, lung, renal and melanoma cancers.