Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp. grossed $41.3 million and NeoprobeCorp. brought in $32.4 million in public offerings completed lateTuesday and Wednesday, respectively.

Alliance, of San Diego, sold 2.5 million shares at $16.50 each, about$1.50 per share less than Alliance was hoping for when it registeredto sell the shares last month. The offering, however, together withmoney from a new corporate partnership, significantly improved thecompany's cash position.

Alliance ended 1995 with $13 million _ less than a year of cash _but has brought in about $67 million since then. The company's burnrate also was reduced about $10 million per year, to $18 million, as aresult of the recently completed collaboration with Hoechst MarionRoussel, the Frankfurt, Germany, pharmaceutical division of HoechstAG.

The deal with Hoechst centers around the oxygen-carrying liquid,LiquiVent, which is in pivotal studies for acute respiratory failure.Hoechst purchased $22 million in convertible Alliance stock, whichis separate from the public offering, and paid a license fee that's beenestimated at $5 million.

Alliance has a similar deal with Johnson & Johnson, of NewBrunswick, N.J., for Oxygent, an intravascular oxygen carrier beingevaluated in Phase II studies as a substitute for blood transfusionsduring surgery. A recently started Phase II trial is testing Oxygent incardiopulmonary bypass patients. That deal, signed in 1994, entaileda $15 million equity investment and a license fee of about $4 million.

Alliance has said both deals potentially are worth about $100 million.The company's third product is Imagent US, a contrast agentdesigned to enhance ultrasound images. Imagent was just taken intoPhase I studies.

Gwen Rosenberg, Alliance's director, corporate communications,said company officials were pleased with the response they got ontheir road show. "In general people who did not know about Alliancewere interested that we had three very promising products. Anotherarea that was well received was our marketing partners," she said."For those who already knew about Alliance the biggest reaction washow far we've progressed in the past year."

Proceeds from the offering will be used to further development ofImagent and pipeline products, Rosenberg said. Alliance's partnersare paying for development costs associated with Oxygent andLiquiVent.

Alliance now has 27.5 million shares outstanding. Its stock(NASDAQ:ALLP) gained $1 Wednesday to close at $17.75.

Neoprobe, meanwhile, will need the money from its offering tosupport introduction and marketing of its colorectal cancerdiagnostic, RIGScan CR49, which consists of a hand-held radiationdetection probe and a radiolabeled targeting agent.

Neoprobe, of Dublin, Ohio, had about $18.6 million in cash at theend of 1995. It now has about 19.3 million shares outstanding. The$32.4 million from the offering should take Neoprobe into 1998, saidJohn Schroepfer, vice president of finance and administration.

"We're going into a phase we've never been in before," saidSchroepfer, referring to manufacturing and regulatory issues thecompany will be dealing with over the coming quarters. "We'rehoping to get a marketing deal done but we're also preparing todevelop internal marketing resources."

Neoprobe hopes to submit a dossier to European regulatoryauthorities for RIGScan CR49 this quarter, and hopes to file aproduct license application with the FDA in the third quarter.

Neoprobe's stock (NASDAQ:NEOP) lost 88 cents per shareWednesday to close at $18.88. n

-- Jim Shrine

(c) 1997 American Health Consultants. All rights reserved.