¿ Cytos Biotechnology, of Zurich, Switzerland, said it had received CHF50 million (US$32 million) in a second round of venture capital financing. "This latest infusion," coming on top of CHF11 million in 1999, "broadens our solid financial base," said Wolfgang Renner, president and CEO of Cytos. The company says that its DELphi technology, which functionally reproduces the 100,000 human proteins, "feeds pharmaceutical companies with the relevant proteins to be used as drugs or targets."

¿ Quadrant Healthcare plc, of Nottingham, UK, has signed a license agreement with Baxter Interna tional Inc. giving Baxter access to proprietary stabilization technology for Factor VIII blood products. Quadrant will receive license fees and milestone payments in excess of US$3 million. Baxter will fund all development and marketing, and will pay royalties on sales. CEO Iain Ross said the license has "the potential to generate substantial revenues for Quadrant." Baxter is a major player in the U.S. and European Factor VIII market, which exceeds $1 billion a year. Quadrant's patent rights will offer additional patent protection for Baxter. Quadrant's stabilization technology is based on a naturally occurring sugar, trehalose, that can be chemically bound to drugs, allowing them to be stored at ambient temperatures.

¿ Roche, of Basel, Switzerland, and PE Biosystems, which now conducts business under the Applied Biosystems name, announced on July 27 an agreement to expand their marketing of products incorporating the polymerase chain reaction technology. The arrangement will allow both companies to develop and market products for all potential uses of PCR, and Applied Biosystems, of Foster City, Calif., will continue to distribute products Roche manufactures for research and non-diagnostic applications. Roche's products include a line of diagnostics, tests for infectious diseases and a fully automated system for nucleic acid extraction for genetic and clinical research. Applied Biosystems' products include a detection system for large-scale gene expression analysis.

¿ Transgene, of Strasbourg, France, reported a reduced net loss of EUR3.9 million (US$3.7 million) for the second quarter of 2000, as against EUR4.5 million in the corresponding period of last year and EUR6.5 million in the first three months of 2000. This outcome was mainly due to the receipt of a $1 million milestone payment from Schering-Plough Corp. in June, as well as to an increase in revenues to EUR1.7 million from EUR1.2 million in the second quarter of 1999. For the first half of this year, Transgene's net loss rose by 25.4% to EUR10.4 million from EUR8.3 million in the corresponding six months of 1999. As at June 30 last, the company had cash and cash equivalents of EUR41.3 million (US$39.4 million), down from EUR50.2 million at the end of 1999.