¿ Atlantic Technology Ventures Inc., of New York, entered into a $3 million stock purchase agreement with BH Capital Investments L.P. and Excalibur Limited Partners. Atlantic expects to receive this investment in three equal parts of $1 million per fiscal quarter. The investors have agreed to purchase at two separate closings $3 million of Atlantic's new Series B convertible preferred stock and warrants to purchase 210,000 shares of Atlantic's common stock.

¿ Aviron, of Mountain View, Calif., received a $2.7 million Challenge Grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the NIH to develop a vaccine to protect against possible pandemic influenza viruses. The vaccine candidates will use the intranasal delivery technology currently used for FluMist, Aviron's investigational intranasal influenza vaccine. The grant is part of $19 million awarded to eight companies through the Challenge Grants program, established through the support of Congress. Through this program, NIAID provides matching funds to companies that commit their own dollars and resources toward developing new drugs and vaccines against malaria, tuberculosis, influenza and dengue virus.

¿ Corixa Corp., of Seattle, received a $2.3 million Challenge Grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop a new candidate vaccine for the treatment of tuberculosis. Corixa will conduct preclinical and clinical testing of a new candidate vaccine produced using M. tuberculosis proteins, combined with formulations developed by SmithKline Beecham Biologicals, of London, containing components discovered and manufactured by Corixa.

¿ EDEN Bioscience Corp., of Seattle, in connection with its initial public offering of 5.8 million shares, said underwriters have exercised an option to purchase an additional 870,000 shares of common stock at a price of $15 per share to cover overallotments, bringing the total to about $100 million. The public offering was led by Merrill Lynch & Co. and Stephens Inc., with George Baum & Co. and Ragen MacKenzie Inc. acting as co-managers.

¿ GenStar Therapeutics, of San Diego, said the company's gene therapy clinical protocol for hemophilia A has been reviewed by the National Institutes of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. The FDA previously cleared the company's IND application for a Phase I human clinical trial. GenStar's gene therapy product for hemophilia A is a gene delivery system derived from the common cold virus.

¿ HemaSure Inc., of Marlborough, Mass., said the American Red Cross notified it that it is terminating its supply contract for HemaSure's r\LS Red Blood Cell Filtration System. In 1999, the ARC entered a three-year deal with HermaSure, but in April it notified HermaSure it was suspending use of the system pending completion of an investigation into the possible role the filtration system may have played in patient reactions.

¿ Integra LifeSciences Holdings Corp., of Plainsboro, N.J., said Ralph-Heiko Mattern, a research scientist at its corporate research center in San Diego, received a Phase II funding grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIH, through the Small Business Innovation Research program. The combined $750,000 program will support the development of integrin-selective RGD-based compounds to be used in the company's efforts to design innovative tissue regeneration products.

¿ Lexicon Genetics Inc., of The Woodlands, Texas, concluded its 1997 agreement with the Merck Genome Research Institute, of West Point, Pa., in which MGRI provided funding for the development of Lexicon's proprietary gene trapping process. The process was used for the production of Lexicon's OmniBank library of knockout mouse clones for functional genomics research.

¿ Novavax Inc., of Columbia, Md., was awarded a $850,000 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases through the Challenge Grants program of the NIH. Louis Potash, director of Novavax's biomedical services division, will lead a team of scientists in developing influenza vaccines without the use of chicken eggs and the most promising vaccine will be prepared for use in future clinical trials.

¿ Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Boulder, Colo., repurchased its rights to Heptazyme from Eli Lilly and Co., of Indianapolis, and will initiate Phase II clinical trials for the anti-hepatitis C ribozyme to study dose-ranging and biological markers of the drug's efficacy in chronic hepatitis C patients. Lilly has directed the clinical trials to date under a licensing agreement between the companies, but Ribozyme will direct all subsequent clinical trials, with a Phase II trial expected to begin in the first quarter of 2001.

¿ Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Francisco, said it entered a collaboration with Cytomation Inc., of Fort Collins, Colo., to combine Cytomation's ultra-high-speed live-cell analyzer and sorter with Rigel's retroviral and gene transfer techniques to screen millions of molecules for drugs and drug targets. The MoFlo system from Cytomation can analyze and sort tens of thousands of cells per second into designated receptacles. Rigel currently uses MoFlo in its proprietary drug discovery process.

¿ Sangamo BioSciences Inc., of Richmond, Calif., published an article titled "Active Global Remodeling of Somatic Nuclei in Egg Cytoplasm by the Nucleosomal ATPase ISWI" in Science. The article is co-authored by Alan P. Wolffe, Sangamo's chief scientific officer, and colleagues, including scientists at the National Institutes of Health, and explores the reversibility of processes that lead to cellular differentiation.

¿ Sequenom Inc., of San Diego, said it sold four additional MassARRAY systems, completing deals with Hitachi Ltd., Genetics Institute, Genaissance Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Integrated DNA Technologies Inc. SEQUENOM is translating information generated from the human genome map into practical applications for improving diagnostics, drug development and therapeutics.

¿ Xenogen Corp., of Alameda, Calif., agreed to acquire DNX Transgenic Sciences, of Cranbury, N.J., in a stock transaction. Xenogen will issue 3.5 million shares of its Series F preferred stock in exchange for all the outstanding shares of DNX. Xenogen has also given MDS Inc., of Princeton, N.J., exclusive rights to certain technologies, pending closure of the acquisition. DNX is a wholly owned subsidiary of MDS.