With its shares trading at under a half dollar, Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc. pulled off an agreement for $48 million in financing, the keystone in a deal that gives investors control of the company and changes its direction to focus on RNA interference. (BioWorld Today)

As investigators continue to sift through pieces of the disintegrated Space Shuttle Columbia and the nation mourns the deaths of seven astronauts, scientists involved in about 80 experiments aboard the doomed craft also are mourning the loss of their experiments - although you might not know it from the mainstream media.

A year after shareholders of a different firm put the kibosh on a planned merger with privately held Eos Biotechnology Inc., Protein Design Labs Inc. said it has entered an agreement to pay $37.5 million for the spurned company. (BioWorld Today)

With an appeals court decision that Biogen Inc. must pay another $55 million to Schering AG in their patent fight over beta interferon, the longstanding dispute apparently has been laid to rest. (BioWorld Today)

With 20 drugs approved last year, a somewhat brightened market picture in the final quarter of 2002 and Phase III data due in the months ahead, analysts are finding cause for optimism even as the rumblings of war grow louder.