Brisbane-based cancer therapeutic developer Peplin's (ASX:PEP) revenues dropped to AUD$3.4 million in the 2004/05 financial year, down substantially from $6.3 million in the previous year, due to the termination in October 2004 of a collaboration and license agreement with US company Allergan for the company's topical skin cancer drug PEP005. [ + ]

Reports that a potential blockbuster drug for multiple sclerosis, Tysabri, could be back on shelves later this year appear to have given a boost to Melbourne company Antisense Therapeutics (ASX:ANP), which is also developing an MS drug. [ + ]

A Polartechnics (ASX:PLT) extraordinary general meeting (EGM) requisitioned by the company's former interim chairman Richard Opara will be held in Sydney this Friday, despite the company receiving a letter from him on August 8 proposing to postpone the meeting. [ + ]

Biota Holdings (ASX:BTA) has backed as "accurate" a newspaper report that Germany has placed an order of more than AUD$100 million for Relenza, the anti-flu drug developed by Biota and commercialised by GlaxoSmithKline. [ + ]

Danish biotech firm NeuroSearch has decided not to start clinical development of drugs aimed at treating Alzheimer's disease. [ + ]

Perth-based Clinical Cell Culture (C3, ASX:CCE) has placed 28.6 million new fully paid ordinary shares worth AUD$10 million with Australian institutional and sophisticated investors. [ + ]

Bioinformatics Australia, Australia's peak body for bioinformatics, hosted by industry organisation AusBiotech, has announced its newly elected committee. [ + ]

A trade mission to World Life Sciences Week being held in London this October is taking applications from Australian biotech companies. [ + ]

Prof Ian Frazer, whose research on a vaccine for a leading cause of cervical cancer is being developed by CSL and Merck & Co, has won the inaugural 2005 CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science. [ + ]

New Zealand-based animal vaccine specialist AgVax Developments has been taken over by Intervet, a business unit of Dutch healthcare giant Akzo Nobel. [ + ]

Antibody therapeutic developer EvoGenix (ASX:EGX) listed today on the Australian Stock Exchange at AUD$0.30, 20 per cent above its issue price of AUD$0.25. [ + ]

Select Vaccines (ASX:SLT) has licensed the manufacture, global marketing and distribution of its rapid hepatitis A diagnostic technology to US-based Rapid Medical Diagnostic (RMD), but has kept the distribution rights for the test in Australia and New Zealand. [ + ]

Melbourne-based biotech Avexa (ASX:AVX) has finished its first financial year of operation with AUD$15.7 million in the bank -- enough operating cash for two years, according to CEO Julian Chick . [ + ]

Recently listed Sydney biopharma Apollo Life Sciences (ASX:AOP) has claimed that its human-expressed vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a protein involved in the formation of new blood vessels, performs five times better in an international proliferation test than a leading competitor's protein and the World Health Organisation's (WHO) protein standard. [ + ]

Research published in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry is the description of a method that can detect a pattern of contamination on banknotes from drug-related crime that is different from the pattern seen in general circulation. The process is claimed to be significantly faster than other previous methods.