¿ Aeterna Laboratories Inc., of Quebec City, said it raised C$2.1 million (US$1.4 million) through underwriters' overallotment options above the C$14 million raised through its initial public offering in May. Yorkton Securities Inc. was the lead underwriter. AEeterna has more than C$62 million in cash and short term investments, and has access to contributions up to C$25 million from Technology Partnerships Canada and up to $5 million indirectly from the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

¿ Argonaut Technologies, of San Carlos, Calif., entered an agreement with MediChem Research to jointly develop chemical reaction optimization methods. Argonaut will combine MediChem's Design of Experiments statistical software with its own Surveyor instrument for worldwide distribution early in 2001.

¿ Catalyst Communications Inc., of Sarasota, Fla., changed its name to DNAPrint genomics Inc. The company, which offers genomic researchers hardware and software for disease dissection and patient classification, will trade under the symbol DNAP on the Pink Sheets.

¿ Cell Pathways Inc., of Horsham, Pa., said it signed a marketing and distribution agreement for Canada with Paladin Labs, of Montreal, giving Paladin exclusive rights to commercialize Aptosyn, a precancerous colon polyp treatment for patients with familial adenomatus polyposis, under undisclosed terms. Aptosyn is currently under FDA review in the United States.

¿ Galenica Pharmaceuticals, of Frederick, Md., said Phase I human clinical trials of its proprietary adjuvant, GPI-0100 are under way to evaluate it in a vaccine for the treatment of prostrate cancer developed by the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The GPI-0100 series, Galenica's lead family of adjuvants, is made up of second-generation semi-synthetic products derived from plant saponins.

¿ Lexicon Genetics Inc., of The Woodlands, Texas, joined with The Rockefeller University and the Scripps Research Institute in a functional genomics research collaboration that includes the development of knockout mouse validated gene targets with potential pharmaceutical relevance for schizophrenia treatments. Lexicon plans to modify the mouse genome to create 11 knockout and conditionally altered genes that encode potential schizophrenia drug targets.

¿ Nanogen Inc., of San Diego, received its first full lot of NanoChip Molecular Biology Workstation instruments from Hitachi Ltd., of Japan. Nanogen will use the instruments for customer shipments and internal assay development.

¿ Trega Biosciences Inc., of San Diego, licensed its IDEA predictive model for drug absorption to F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., of Basel, Switzerland. The terms of the agreement were undisclosed. Roche plans to use the software product, which recently successfully completed a validation study, in drug development projects.