COLLAGEN TO PURCHASE STAKE IN GENPHARMCollagen Corp. announced Monday at the 18th Annual Alex.Brown & Sons Health Care Conference in Baltimore that it hasagreed to purchase $2 million worth of preferred stock inGenPharm International of Mountain View, Calif.

As well, Collagen (NASDAQ:CGEN) of Palo Alto, Calif., willcollaborate with Gene Pharming Europe, GenPharm's Europeanoperation based in Leiden, the Netherlands, to develop a meansto produce human collagen in the milk of transgenic dairycattle. Collagen will make additional equity investments in andresearch and milestone payments to GenPharm as thecollaboration develops.

Collagen Corp. currently extracts the collagen it incorporatesinto its medical products from steer hides. It has beeninvestigating sources of human collagen for several years, andis currently collaborating with Institut Merieux on ways ofextracting collagen from human placental tissue.

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