By Mary Welch

Neose Technologies Inc. plans to sell 2.5 million shares of its common stock, which would fetch about $53 million at Friday's opening price.

Neose's stock (NASDAQ:NTEC) closed Friday at $20.50, down 75 cents.

The Horsham, Pa.-based firm will use the proceeds to acquire new technologies or companies as well as to fund research and development activities.

The underwriters will be given an overallotment option on 375,000 additional shares. Chase H&Q Inc., of New York, is the lead underwriter. Prudential Vector Healthcare and Warburg Dillon Read LLC, of New York, as well as U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, of Minneapolis, are co-managing the offering.

Neose, which develops proprietary technologies for the synthesis and manufacture of complex carbohydrates, will have almost 14 million shares outstanding after the offering.

Separately, Neose released its fourth-quarter and year-end 1999 numbers, showing a net loss of $13.3 million, or $1.25 per share, for 1999. Revenues for the year increased to $422,000 from 1998's number of $390,000. As of Dec. 31, the company had $33.2 million in cash.

The company is in a SEC-imposed "quiet period," said Sherrill Neff, Neose's president and chief financial officer, and could not comment.

Incorporated in 1989, Neose focuses on the discovery and development of complex carbohydrates (oligosaccharides) for nutritional and pharmaceutical uses. The use of oligosaccharides has been limited despite the key role they play in human disease because of their complexity and the difficulty and expense in producing them, the company said.

However, Neose's Multi-Transferase Reaction (MTR) technology is designed to overcome that challenge and allow for the rapid and cost-efficient production of naturally occurring oligosaccharides.

The company has several collaborations, including one with New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. to develop and manufacture complex carbohydrates for two therapeutic cancer vaccines. The first vaccine candidate, GMK, is in Phase III trials for malignant melanoma. The second candidate, MGV, is being developed for several other cancer indications, including colorectal, lymphoma, small-cell lung, sarcoma, gastric and neuroblastoma. Neose is using its MTR technology in this project.

The company also has a joint venture with the McNeil Specialty Products division of Johnson & Johnson, of New Brunswick, N.J., to manufacture and market fructooligosaccharides (FOS) and other complex carbohydrates. The joint venture's manufacturing plant should be completed in Athens, Ga., early this year, and some of the financing's proceeds will go toward that collaboration.

Last year Neose and the Wyeth Nutritionals division of American Home Products Corp., of Madison, N.J., formed a collaboration to develop human milk oligosaccharide additives to infant nutritional formulas.

Late last year, Neose halted development of NE-1530 to treat pediatric ear infections after a Phase II trial showed no significant benefit compared to placebo. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 21, 1999, p. 1.)

The company has NE-0080 in Phase II trials for the prevention and treatment of Helicobacter pylori-induced ulcers and gastritis. Results should be available by mid-year.