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Classifieds

Publication Date: Friday, June 22, 2001

BUSINESS ONLINE

Safeway helps fund, support prostate cancer cure campaign

Steve Burd, chairman, president and CEO of Safeway, said the Pleasanton-headquartered company is making "a highly visible effort that touches a large segment of our customers and employees. We hope it brings us one step closer to a cure."

CaP CURE is the largest private source of funding for prostate cancer research in the country. Participating stores include Safeway, Vons (southern California), Dominick's (Chicago), Randall's/Tom Thumb (Texas), Carr's (Alaska) and Genuardi's (Delaware Valley and Pennsylvania).

"Safeway has had a long standing commitment to support the effort to find a cure for breast cancer, a major cause of death among women," Burd said. "In addition to these efforts, we are very pleased to conduct our first national campaign to address prostate cancer."

In addition to the company's fundraising campaign, over 900 of Safeway's in-store pharmacies will provide special prostate cancer fact sheets to better educate customers and raise awareness about the disease. The "Two Against One" Prostate Cancer Campaign is featured on the reverse side of the flyer that enlists the help of spouses and significant others to help the prostate cancer patient.

BART to operate longer trains for Gay Pride Day Parade

Beginning at 9 a.m., BART personnel will be selling tickets from tables at the Dublin/Pleasanton station as a special convenience for expected crowds. After the parade, personnel will be selling tickets from tables at the Civic Center and Powell Street stations for the homebound trip. BART urges those planning to take BART to the parade to purchase round-trip tickets.

The parade begins at 10:30 a.m. at Market and Beale Streets and continues toward Civic Center ending at Market and 8th Streets just above the Civic Center BART Station. The celebration will take place at Civic Center from noon until 7 p.m., and will feature live entertainment, dancing, food and crafts.

BART officials pointed out that platform and street elevators at the Civic Center station are out-of-service due to overhauling that began on March 5. BART is working with local bus operators so that they can assist people who use the elevators to reach adjacent BART stations.

New Roche site adds opportunities for Pleasanton lab

The new virology research unit will employ senior researchers, including some of the project leaders from Welwyn. Roche said the move would strengthen its bioscience site in Palo Alto, which is focused on the discovery and early clinical development of new medicines to treat diseases in the areas of inflammation, respiratory diseases, bone disorders, neurobiology and genitourinary diseases.

In addition, the company said the move will create opportunities for synergies between marketing and research in the U.S. and the company's diagnostic viral test unit, Roche Molecular Systems, in Pleasanton.

"Roche has over the years paved the way for a number of significant breakthroughs in the fight against AIDS, among the most notable is the first protease inhibitor, Invirase/Fortovase (saquinavir), and the leading treatment for CMV retinitis, Valcyte (valganciclovir)," said Jonathan Knowles, head of Roche Pharma Research. "The relocation of this productive research to Palo Alto positions Roche to continue to create important new medicines in the fight against viral diseases. This step reinforces Roche's commitment to maintain its strong presence in the areas of influenza, HIV/AIDS, and hepatitis through our own R&D efforts and through key strategic alliances."

Lowder takes top post at San Ramon Medical

With more than 12 years of hospital administration experience, Lowder will be responsible for all strategic, operational and clinical activities at the San Ramon hospital. Since 1998, she has been the chief operating officer of USC University Hospital in Los Angeles. The 284-bed tertiary and quaternary teaching medical center is staffed by the USC School of Medicine and has major services that include heart, lung, liver and kidney transplantation.

"Diane has done an excellent job of overseeing all operational activities and managing contractual activities, physician relationships and strategy for one of the leading providers of high level medical care in Southern California," said Dennis Brown, senior vice president, operations for Tenet HealthSystem's Northern Region. "Her experience at USC University Hospital makes her uniquely qualified to continue to build San Ramon Regional Medical Center's reputation as one of the leading health care providers in the Bay Area."

AdventNet releases new Web product software

The company said that its software product is built to facilitate managed services. It is a scalable, high performance solution to customer network and service management, using a multi-tier architecture that provides for distribution of processing as needed. This allows a service provider to start small, and scale the system as the number of customers, devices and applications to be managed grows.

New clinical studies at SuperGen

This second pivotal study, which has enrolled more than 400 patients at 200 medical centers across the U.S., compares rubitecan to appropriate chemotherapy as third-line therapy for patients who have previously failed multiple types of chemotherapy. Enrollment for the first pivotal study--a gemcitabine--refractory study, which compares rubitecan to 5-FU, another chemotherapeutic agent -- already has been completed. The third pivotal study, comparing rubitecan to gemcitabine as first-line therapy, is more than 90 percent enrolled.

Under the terms of its worldwide sales-and-marketing agreement with Abbott Laboratories, SuperGen received an equity milestone payment. Specific details regarding the milestone payment were not disclosed. Based in Dublin, SuperGen is a pharmaceutical company involved in the development and commercialization of products intended to treat life-threatening diseases, particularly cancer.

Losses continue at Momentum Business Applications

For the year ended April 30, Momentum has a net loss of $116.3 million or $24.78 per share, compared to a net loss of $42.1 million or $8.96 per share for the same period a year earlier.

Revenues from royalties were $2.1 million and $6.5 million respectively for the three months and year ended April 30, compared with $314,000 and $563,000 respectively for same periods previously. Royalty revenue is derived from PeopleSoft, Inc.'s end user licensing and shipment of certain software products developed under Momentum's Development and License Agreement.

The company said that starting last September, PeopleSoft began shipping PeopleSoft 8, a family of pure internet eBusiness software products which included approximately 60 new application products, a significant number of which were developed under various Momentum development projects.

While royalty revenue increased on a year over year basis, royalty revenue decreased approximately 19 percent over the $2.6 million of royalty revenue recorded in the immediately preceding quarter ended January 31. Momentum attributed the decrease to PeopleSoft's sequential decline in licensing activity related to Momentum products, which it blamed on typical software seasonal revenue patterns. It also said that there was a decline in the royalty rate on certain Momentum products.

New Wheel Technology moves to Pleasanton

"The relocation comes at a critical time for the company," said Ray Willenberg, Jr., president and CEO of New Visual. "Expanded and improved facilities afford us the ability to complete the research effort of our transmission technology and begin the development of our initial product design."

According to Willenberg, New Visual Entertainment is pioneering the development of a proprietary broadband transmission technology with the mission to utilize existing copper telecommunications infrastructure to deliver high data content to the home or office at VDSL or fiber optic transfer rates. Through its New Wheel subsidiary, New Visual is developing technology that would allow the bundling of voice, video and data over existing copper telephone wires, thus potentially eliminating the need for fiber optic cable to the home or office.