¿ Amgen Inc., of Thousand Oaks, Calif. and HealthCite, a web technology developer, have agreed to collaborate in the development of software and technology and web development in an alliance that includes a $10 million Amgen direct investment in HealthCite, and a five-year marketing agreement. Amgen said it will use HealthCite's tools to serve physicians and to help it strengthen physician/patient relationships, and increase awareness among physicians and consumers of Amgen's new products.

¿ Caliper Technologies Corp., of Mountain View, Calif., said it completed a high-throughput screen for Sugen Inc., of Redwood City, Calif., using the Sugen compound library and a selected target.

¿ Cel-Sci Corp., of Vienna, Va., said it will expand its Baltimore laboratory facilities by more than 6,000 square feet to accommodate work on its cancer immunotherapy product Multikine.

¿ Celsion Corp., of Columbia, Md., said it will acquire Duke University technology that uses focused heat to target and selectively turn on gene therapy. Duke scientists have used heat to increase production of interleukin-12 300-fold, delaying tumor growth. Celsion will acquire the technology in an expansion of an existing agreement begun in 1999.

¿ Cepheid Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., said the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command increased funding for Cepheid's development contract for accelerated fully automated DNA analysis systems from $1.35 million to $1.9 million. The systems are designed to detect pathogenic spores for the military, and will incorporate sample concentration, spore lysis, DNA amplification and detection into a unique, portable disposable cartridge based on Cepheid's microfluidic technology.

¿ GeneData AG, of Basel, Switzerland, licensed to Zeneca Agrochemicals, of London, its GD Expressionist software for the analysis of gene expression array data. The technology will be used to develop crop protection products.

¿ Genome Therapeutics Corp., of Waltham, Mass., said it has launched its PathoGenome Database through Jamesburg, N.J.-based Compugen Inc.'s LabOnWeb.com, allowing Internet access to the database of DNA sequence information. Data will be accessible to researchers on a pay-per-use basis.

¿ Insmed Inc., of Richmond, Va., said it will begin trading shares on the Nasdaq National Market today under the symbol "INSMD" through Friday, Aug. 25, at which time the symbol will revert back to "INSM."

¿ Interferon Sciences Inc., of New Brunswick, N.J., said it raised $7.7 million in a private placement of 11.63 million units, each consisting of one common share and one warrant. The warrants are exercisable until April 2005 at $1.50 each for one additional share. The company also filed for $4.8 million of tax benefits under New Jersey's corporation business tax benefit certificate transfer program. The company said it plans to use the proceeds from this financing to fund existing projects and new ventures.

¿ Neomorphic Inc., of Berkeley, Calif., and The Institute for Genomic Research entered an agreement for the continuation of a high-throughput genome data annotation system project. Phase two of the project will focus on enhancing the core capabilities of the Annotation Station technology developed in phase one to raise the platform's ability to integrate disparate data into the annotation process.

¿ NeuralStem Biopharmaceuticals Ltd., of College Park, Md., said it completed a Series B financing worth $5 million from LJRJ LLC, an investment company led by Yurie Systems Inc. founder and CEO Jeong Kim. NeuralStem plans to use the funding for its internal genomics program, which focuses on characterizing the function of genes in the central nervous system using patented CNS stem cells.

¿ Procyon BioPharma Inc., said its PSP94 platform for prostate cancer also shows promise as a diagnostic product for the disease, according to a study to be published in the Journal of Urology. The study suggested that measuring prostate secretory protein in prostate tissue biopsies could aid physicians.

¿ Select Therapeutics Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., entered a research agreement with the University of Arizona Cancer Center for therapeutic vaccine evaluation in cancer patients. Research will focus on activating dendritic cells in vivo, stimulating them to recognize tumor-associated antigens and activate T lymphocytes to kill tumor cells.

¿ Sequenom Inc., of San Diego, said it successfully completed the largest SNP assay design and validation project to date in a collaboration with the National Cancer Institute. Using Sequenom's automated assay design process and MassArray system, the collaboration developed more than 9,000 assays to confirm and validate SNPs in a population. The two have agreed to expand the project to develop an additional 10,000 SNP assays.

¿ The Immune Response Corp., of Carlsbad, Calif., said it will offer 2.4 million shares of common stock at $6 apiece in a public offering expected to gross $14.4 million. Underwriters First Security Van Kasper and Gruntal & Co. LLC. were granted an overallotment option on 360,000 shares in the offering, which will fund manufacturing scale-up for Remune.