Nanogen Files $50M Shelf Offering
Nanogen said last week that it plans to sell up to $50 million in stock, debt securities, and warrants under a “shelf” registration process that enables the size, price, and terms to be determined at the time of sale.
In a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on May 25, Nanogen said that under the shelf process, “we may from time to time sell any combination of securities described in this prospectus in one or more offerings, up to a total dollar amount of $50,000,000.”
The company said it plans to use the proceeds for working capital, acquisitions and other general corporate purposes, including sales and marketing support, R&D, and, “if opportunities arise, to acquire businesses, products, technologies or licenses that are complementary to our business and make strategic investments in businesses complementary to our business.”
VBI Completes Large Plant Study Using Affy Chips
The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech last week said that it has completed the “largest ever Affymetrix GeneChip microarray study for a plant experimental system in an academic research setting.”
The 2,600-chip experiment explored the interaction of plant and pathogen genes during infection of soybean with the root-rot pathogen Phytophthora sojae, with a focus on mechanisms of long-lasting disease resistance, VBI said. P. sojae causes severe damage in soybean crops and results in annual losses of $100 million-$200 million for commercial farmers in the United States alone, VBI said.
VBI’s Affymetrix microarray experiment combined two approaches, transcriptional profiling and quantitative trait locus mapping. The institute said the information obtained from the study will be “valuable for understanding how legumes may be protected from a wide variety of pathogens, and how many hosts may be protected against pathogens.”
VBI said that it now plans to enter the data-analysis phase of the project, which is expected to take 18 months. The project is being supported by a cooperative agreement from the National Science Foundation Plant Genome Research Program.