By Lisa Seachrist

Washington Editor

Viral vaccine specialist Aviron Inc. and Hyseq Inc., a gene discovery company, both completed public offerings garnering a total of $107 million.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Aviron completed the offering of 2.4 million shares of common stock valued at $27 per share and netted $65 million — $8 million more than originally planned for its vaccine technology.

Aviron's lead product is a nasal influenza vaccine that provides 93 percent protection from influenza infection in healthy young children. The company intends to file a product license application with the FDA in mid-1998 for the vaccine for use in children and adults. The company also is developing a nasal vaccine against parainfluenza virus type 3 for the prevention of croup and a subunit vaccine for Epstein-Barr virus.

The company has indicated that the money raised from the offering would primarily fund clinical trials, manufacturing and marketing of its cold-adapted flu vaccine and research and development of its other vaccine programs. (See BioWorld Today, July 29, 1997, p. 1.)

Aviron's stock (NASDAQ:AVIR) was $25.88 per share, down $0.12 on the news.

Hyseq Inc. raised $42 million in its initial public offering of 3 million shares of common stock.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., company garnered $14 per share and netted $3.5 million more than it estimated in its Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Hyseq has no products on the market, but uses its core technology for collaborative research. Its HyX genomics platform can process millions of samples and billions of base pairs per year. The system uses DNA probes, software and bioinformatics to develop gene-based therapeutics and diagnostics.

The company intends to use the proceeds of the offering to develop potential therapeutic and diagnostic products, expand its HyGenomics database and further the development of its HyChip — a technology for sequencing large amounts of DNA.

The company currently is in litigation with Affymetrix Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif., charging that Affymetrix has violated Hyseq's patented "sequencing by hybridization" method. Affymetrix denies the charges.

Hyseq's stock (NASDAQ:HYSQ) was $14.62 per share, up $0.625 on the news. *