Viagene Underwriters Exercise Option

Viagene Inc. announced Monday that its underwriters -- Alex.Brown & Sons, CS First Boston and Nomura SecuritiesInternational Inc. -- have exercised their option to offer a300,000 share overallotment of the company's stock.

The San Diego company (NASDAQ:VIGN) raised $18 million lastmonth through an initial public offering of 2 million shares ofits common stock. Viagene is developing gene transfer drugsfor conditions that include severe viral infections and cancers.

Viagene's stock closed at $9.50 a share on Monday, up 25 cents.

PerSeptive Technologies II Overallotment Exercised

PerSeptive Biosystems Inc. announced that its underwriters,Alex. Brown & Sons and Cowen & Co., have purchased anoverallotment of 345,000 shares of common stock inPerSeptive Technologies II Corp. With the overallotment, thecompany said, the PTC II offering raised gross proceeds ofapproximately $58.2 million.

PTC II (NASDAQ:PTCCZ) is a research and development spinoffof PerSeptive Biosystems (NASDAQ:PBIO) of Cambridge, Mass.PerSeptive Biosystems develops, manufactures and marketsproducts and systems for the purification and analysis ofbiomolecules that are intended to reduce the time and costrequired for the development and manufacture ofbiopharmaceuticals.

Funding from the PTC II financing will be used in part for thedevelopment of products based on PerSeptive's Matrix-Assisted, Laser-Desorption Ionization Time-of-Flight (MALDI-TOF) mass-spectrometry technology.

PerSeptive also announced that its Vestec subsidiary received apatent allowance covering the use of the MALDI-TOF mass-spectrometry technology for genome sequencing. The companybelieves that its technology can greatly improve upon the"time-consuming and laborious" process by which DNA iscurrently sequenced, and cited the "fast-growing market" forgenome sequencing, a market that includes the Human GenomeProject.

-- Karl A. Thiel Associate Editor

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