¿ Adolor Corp., of Malvern, Pa., raised more than $8.5 million in a private placement that will fund various projects in the company¿s pipeline, including three in clinical development and a fourth slated to start trials soon. Led by Tredegar Investments, of Seattle, the financing also included: S.R. One Ltd. and TL Ventures, both of Wayne, Pa.; Alta Partners and Weiss, Peck & Greer Venture Partners, both of San Francisco; OneLiberty Partners, of Boston; ARCH Venture Partners, of Chicago; and Falcon Technology Partners, of Devon, Pa.
¿ Biomatrix Inc., of Ridgefield, N.J., received approval from Australia¿s Therapeutic Goods Administration to market Hylaform, its injectable treatment for the correction of facial wrinkles and depressed scars.
¿ Celera Genomics, of Rockville, Md., a division of Perkin-Elmer Corp., of Norwalk, Conn., and Pharmacia & Upjohn (P&U), of Bridgewater, N.J., entered into a five-year agreement that will provide P&U with a subscription to Celera¿s database products and early access to new genomic information. Terms were not disclosed. P&U subscriptions to Celera¿s databases also include access to associated bioinformatics systems and tools for viewing, browsing and analyzing genomic information. P&U will retain the rights to any discoveries it makes using Celera¿s databases for its drug discovery purposes.
¿ Pharmacopeia Inc., of Princeton, N.J., entered into a collaboration with Harvard University and its Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology (ICCB) that will allow the institute and researchers at the university to use ECLiPS, Pharmacopeia¿s approach to small-molecule combinatorial chemistry. ECLiPS technology enables the rapid and cost-effective synthesis of very large numbers of identifiable drug-like molecules suited for the type of research being conducted at the ICCB, which focuses on chemical genetics.
¿ SciClone Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Mateo, Calif., received approval for Zadaxin thymosin alpha 1 for the treatment of hepatitis B in Vietnam. In addition, Singapore expanded its Zadaxin marketing approval to include the treatment of hepatitis C.
¿ Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Irvine, Calif., reported that its stock has been delisted from the Nasdaq SmallCap Market. The company¿s common stock is now eligible to trade on the OTC Bulletin Board.
¿ Endovasc Ltd., of Montgomery, Texas, expanded its critical limb ischemia therapy program to include doctors and scientists at the Polyclinique in Nancy, France. The agreement involves testing the therapeutic effects of Liprostin in salvaging limbs that would otherwise be amputated due to peripheral occlusive vascular disease, which is a progressive disease that blocks blood circulation to the extremities.
¿ Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., delivered its seventh antibacterial drug target for screening to Wyeth-Ayerst Research, the principal pharmaceutical research and development division of Madison, N.J.-based American Home Products. Millennium is conducting a research program to discover antibacterial targets and is screening synthetic compound collections on behalf of Wyeth-Ayerst. Millennium will receive an undisclosed milestone payment. The collaboration began in late 1996.
¿ ProdiGene Inc., of College Station, Texas, and Genecor International Inc., of Rochester, N.Y., expanded their collaboration to develop enzyme products utilizing transgenic plants. The original agreement, signed in October 1997, gave Genecor an option to expand the scope to develop additional enzymes, and Genecor will now fund the additional products. Genecor is a joint venture between Eastman Chemical Co., of Kingsport, Tenn., and Cultor Ltd., of Helsinki, Finland.