Small caps round-up: Forte Energy, Discovery Metals Proximagen...

21st Dec 2010 09:59

Uranium company Forte Energy has been testing for rare earth elements (REE) in Guinea and the latest assay results indicate "provide a higher level of encouragement that a substantial body of REE mineralisation may exist within the company's 100% owned Firawa uranium project.""REE assays from these five samples exceed that from the first sample and provide the company with some comfort that REE mineralisation is wide spread throughout the Firawa system," it said Tuesday.Discovery Metals has rallied after being awarded the mining licence for the Boseto copper project in northwest Botswana. The Boseto copper project construction timeline remains on track for commissioning in the first half of 2012, it said.Proximagen, a drug company focused on problems with the central nervous system, has bought the global rights to two drug development programmes from GlaxoSmithKline. Glaxo said in February it would be stopping drug discovery efforts in some areas of neurosciences including psychiatry and pain. Profit before tax at engineer Goodwin fell from £6.8m to £5.8m in the six months ended 31 October on revenue little changed at £45.9m. The company has also had problems with cashflow, which has deteriorated by around £8m during the period, as customers use the recession as a reason not to appropriately fund contracts, forcing Goodwin to add this cost into its selling prices.Diploma has bought medical device distributor Carsen Medical (CMI) for an initial consideration of C$22.5m cash. CMI is the leading supplier in Canada of automated endoscope reprocessors, disinfectants and enzymatic detergents The majority of CMI's products are distributed under long term exclusive agreements with leading manufacturers of specialised medical equipment.Hutchison MediPharma has raised a further $7.7m in a private investment with SBCVC Fund III, bringing the total capital raised in this investment round to approximately $20.1m. The capital will be used to support the continued development of internally developed research and development programmes. Bid target Silence Therapeutics is to get milestone payments of up to $1.5m in relation to the option agreement signed between Quark and Novartis for QPI-1002. Silence anticipates that its share of future milestone payments relating to Quark's license agreement with Novartis could reach $80m. Based on Silence's AtuRNAi technology, Quark is developing its QPI-1002 for the prevention of acute kidney injury in patients undergoing heart surgery and donor kidney recipients.