The French vaccines manufacturing technology company Vivalis SA is acquiring Austrian vaccines discoverer and developer Intercell AG, of Vienna, in an all-share deal valued at €133 million (US$175 million).

Breaking out the champagne may not have been the appropriate reaction, but Biotie Therapies Oyj had reason to celebrate Friday, as the European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended approval for its alcohol dependence drug Selincro (nalmefene).

• Karus Therapeutics Ltd., of Southhampton, UK, entered a collaboration with the Babraham Institute, of Cambridge, UK, to further characterize treatments for inflammatory diseases through the regulation of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) – a family of enzymes important to immune cell function.

Phenex Pharmaceuticals AG and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Biotech Inc., have thrown in their lot together in a combined effort to develop antagonists of retinoic acid-related orphan receptor gamma (RORγt) for inflammatory disease.

LONDON – Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London published Tuesday details of the Phase III trial of Johnson & Johnson's prostate cancer drug Zytiga (abiraterone acetate) in men who had not received chemotherapy, a day after the FDA agreed to a label extension allowing the drug to be used at that earlier stage of the disease.

LONDON – The British government announced a £100 million (US$161 million) plan to make the UK the first country in the world to introduce whole-genome sequencing into a mainstream health care system.

Biotie Therapies Oyj got a final-quarter lift from its Parkinson's disease drug tozadenant (SYN115), which hit the primary endpoint of a Phase IIb trial in 420 patients.

BRISTOL, UK – The 25 clinical trials of cell therapies that are in progress currently in the UK could represent the foundations of £10 billion (US$16.1 billion) industry.

• Genmab A/S, of Copenhagen, Denmark, will collaborate with Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co. Ltd., of Tokyo, to develop bispecific antibodies based on Genmab's DuoBody platform.

The numbers may be too small to allow any firm conclusions to be drawn, but Clavis Pharma ASA reported positive Phase II data for a combination of elacytarabine and idarubicin in patients with early stage acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who had either relapsed on or proved refractory to a first-line therapy that included cytarabine.