¿ Aastrom Biosciences Inc., of Ann Arbor, Mich., launched its stem cell expansion system, the Aastrom Replicell Cell Production System, in Europe. The company recently obtained CE Mark approval for the product.

¿ Biogen Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., will seek shareholder approval of a 2-for-1 split of the company¿s common stock. If approved, the split will be effected through a stock dividend of one share for each share held, payable on June 25 to stockholders of record at the close of business on June 11. The split will increase the company¿s outstanding shares to 150.4 million.

¿ EntreMed Inc., of Rockville, Md., presented several preclinical studies demonstrating the efficacy of its two lead anti-angiogenic proteins, endostatin and angiostatin, at the 90th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in Philadelphia. The company also reported its manufacturing process for the production of recombinant human endostatin yields a soluble, well-characterized product in quantities sufficient for early clinical trials. Production of the proteins in significant quantities has been a key hurdle for EntreMed. The company said it is on track to begin Phase I trials of endostatin this year.

¿ Pharmacopeia Inc., of Princeton, N.J., and Tularik Inc., of South San Francisco, Calif., entered a collaboration to discover small-molecule therapeutics. Tularik will screen Pharmacopeia combinatorial chemistry libraries of small molecules. Tularik will develop and commercialize any resulting products, in exchange for paying Pharmacopeia an up-front fee, milestone payments and royalties. Financial terms were not disclosed.

¿ Vion Pharmaceuticals Inc., of New Haven, Conn., received $3.25 million from a private placement of 726,306 shares of common stock at $4.47 per share (or 90 percent of the 10-day average closing price of Vion shares as of April 7). The company may sell up to an additional $750,000 worth of shares, under the same terms and conditions.

¿ Structural Bioinformatics Inc., of San Diego, was awarded a $100,000 small business innovation research grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop non-peptide small-molecule antagonists targeting the HER-2 gene.