TheraTech Inc. announced Thursday that SmithKline Beecham's(NYSE:SBH) venture capital arm, S.R. One Ltd. of Radnor, Pa., haspurchased a $1 million equity position in the Salt Lake Citycompany.TheraTech on Monday filed for a secondary public offering of1.25 million shares of common stock.

Theratech, which develops controlled release drug deliverytechnologies, also has equity, multiproduct research andlicensing agreements with Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) of New York,Solvay Pharmaceuticals (the U.S. affiliate of Belgian companySolvay & Cie) and Syntex Corp. (NYSE:SYN) of Palo Alto, Calif.,in the U.S., and with the Sam Yang Group in Korea.

The arrangement with Syntex, which also involved an equityinvestment of "less than five percent" in TheraTech, wascompleted in August 1991, according to Deborah Epstein,TheraTech's vice president of corporate planning. And Pfizer,which made the first equity investment in TheraTech back in1986, extended that commitment this summer. Epstein saidboth of these agreements cover "new chemical entities in thedevelopment pipeline (of Pfizer or Syntex)," for whichTheraTech will develop delivery technologies. "We can deliverdrugs that don't want to go through the skin," Epstein toldBioWorld.

TheraTech's (NASDAQ:THRT) stock closed Thursday at $16.75,up $1.75 a share.

-- Jennifer Van Brunt Senior Editor

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