¿ Abbott Laboratories Inc., of Abbott Park, Ill., said the European Union's Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products adopted a positive opinion on Uprima, its sublingual dopamine receptor agonist for treatment of erectile dysfunction. Uprima (apomorphine hydrochloride sublingual) is the first centrally acting oral therapy expected to be approved in the indication in Europe, it said.

¿ Affymetrix Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif., said the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a Markman ruling confirming the broad scope of four patents Affymetrix claims are infringed by Incyte Genomics Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif., and Hyseq Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif. Both Incyte and Hyseq the previous day said the Markman hearing results favored them. Markman hearings frame claims for litigants in patent disputes.

¿ Albany Molecular Research Inc., of Albany, N.Y., completed its acquisition of New Chemical Entities Inc., of Bothell, Wash. The deal for $22.4 million and about $600,000 in outstanding debt increases Albany's chemistry research capabilities. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 21, 2000.)

¿ AltaRex Corp., of Waltham, Mass., filed a final prospectus with Alberta authorities to raise up to C$12 million (US$7.8 million) through the sale of common shares at C$1.90 per share. AltaRex expects the offering to close on or about Feb. 8. The company said it will use proceeds from the offering to support the final stages of OvaRex clinical development and to further BrevaRex development. AltaRex also said it engaged Trout Group LLC, of New York, to increase AltaRex's visibility. AltaRex has a similar arrangement with The Equicom Group of Toronto, an investor relations group focused on Canada. AltaRex focuses on research and development of late-stage cancer therapeutics.

¿ AviGenics Inc., of Athens, Ga., and Demegen Inc., of Pittsburgh, expanded their research and development collaboration to develop disease-resistant poultry. Demegen granted AviGenics an exclusive worldwide license for Demegen's proprietary antimicrobial peptide library and an additional license for Demegen's novel technologies useful for transgenic poultry creation. The collaboration will expand the incorporation of Demegen peptides into the poultry genome to impart resistance to Salmonella and Marek's disease in addition to coccidiosis.

¿ Biopure Corp., of Cambridge, Mass., contracted three veterinary distributors to support European sales of Oxyglobin, its intravenous oxygen therapeutic solution for the treatment of canine anemia.

¿ Biotechnology Industry Organization, of Washington, said it will make a Genomic XML Viewer available to members. The viewer was designed by LabBook, of McLean, Va., through a grant from the National Institutes of Health's Human Genome Project to create user-friendly tools to visualize genomic data.

¿ Calypte Biomedical Corp., of Alameda, Calif., amended the equity finance commitment it entered last November. The revision allowed Calypte to file a new registration statement with the SEC, and gives the company the right to obtain up to $25 million through the issuance of common stock in a series of drawdowns over a 12-month period. Calypte said it will use the proceeds to fund new product development.

¿ ConjuChem Inc., of Montreal, said underwriters exercised their overallotment option associated with ConjuChem's recent initial public offering, purchasing an additional 682,500 shares at the offering price of $5.50 per share. The overallotment option raises the IPO proceeds for ConjuChem to $28.78 million from the sale of 4.55 million shares.

¿ Cytomedix Inc., of Deerfield, Ill., said it intends to license aspects of its intellectual property. Cytomedix didn't specify which patents of its portfolio it would license. However, it cited several patent applications its portfolio covers, including improved platelet-rich wound healants, wound-healing agents derived from platelets, angiogenic peptides, anti-inflammatory peptides and methods for selecting amounts of platelet releasate for efficacious treatment of tissue.

¿ Equidyne Corp., of San Diego, entered a worldwide agreement with Rosch AG Medizintecknik, of Berlin, and Pharmacia Corp., of Peapack, N.J., to sell the Injex Needle-free Injection System for use with Pharmacia's growth hormone product, Genotropin (somatropin; rDNA origin). Pharmacia gets exclusive rights to use the Injex system with Genotropin until 2006, and the agreement may be extended for additional two-year periods. Further financial details were not disclosed.

¿ Eurogene Ltd., of London, acquired the gene therapy company Oy Quattrogene Ltd., of Kuopio, Finland. The combined company will be known as Ark Therapeutics Ltd. The all-stock transaction creates a company with 50 scientists and clinicians, and the newly formed company also secured access to the gene and vector technology facilities of the A.I. Virtanen Institute at the University of Kuopio.

¿ Imaging Research Inc., of St. Catharines, Ontario, released its latest genomics software package, ArrayStat. The software is designed to provide comprehensive statistical analysis of gene expression data.

¿ Immtech International Inc. said the National Institutes of Health awarded a $1.5 million grant to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to continue research on the antifungal activity of dicationic molecules. Immtech has rights to a worldwide license for dicationic compounds developed through its Scientific Consortium, which includes UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University and Georgia State University.

¿ Immunicon Corp., of Huntington Valley, Pa., and Fox Chase Cancer Center, of Philadelphia, entered a research support agreement focused on colon cancer. The agreement will use Immunicon's diagnostic technology for the monitoring of colon cancer and discovery research into new targets for screening, diagnosis and disease management. The two-year agreement provides for unspecified research funding.

¿ Orphan Medical Inc., of Minneapolis, said its new drug application for Xyrem (sodium oxybate) oral solution will be reviewed at the March 13-15 meeting of the FDA's Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee. Orphan submitted an NDA for Xyrem for treatment of narcolepsy on Oct. 2.

¿ Pharmalicnesing.com, of London, entered a strategic partnership with the BioIndustry Association, of London, for online promotion of technology licensing opportunities, company services and expertise.

¿ Protogene Laboratories Inc., of Menlo Park, Calif., entered a collaboration with Sequenom Inc., of San Diego, to develop novel single nucleotide polymorphism analysis tools for use with Sequenom's MassARRAY system. The collaboration will integrate Protogene's proprietary surface tension DNA microarray technology with the MassARRAY system. It also entered a nonexclusive co-marketing agreement with Silicon Genetics Inc., of Redwood City, Calif. The companies will provide links to each other's web sites, and will cooperate in marketing their products to microarray users. Financial terms were undisclosed.

¿ Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc., of South San Francisco, Calif., extended its 1999 asthma/allergy research collaboration with Pfizer Inc., of New York, for one year. Pfizer will provide additional research funding and milestone payments for Rigel's efforts to use Rigel proprietary peptide libraries to identify intracellular drug targets that regulate production of IgE, an allergic reaction and asthma mediator. Pfizer will have worldwide rights to develop and market drugs against targets that inhibit the switch to IgE in B cells.

¿ St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, of Boston, received a $1 million gift from Jack and Mary Shaughnessy to support the cardiovascular gene therapy program, although a portion will be used to establish an endowment fund.