Biotech plunge

British drug firm AstraZeneca said it would pay a cool US$15.6 billion to acquire MedImmune, a biotechnology company based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, whose main product is a nasal-spray flu vaccine. The deal demonstrates the extraordinary lengths that major drug companies are now prepared to go to in order to get their hands on promising biotechs, observers say. Last year, MedImmune, which was set up in 1988 by Wayne Hockmeyer, a biologist who had worked at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, declared profits of $75 million on sales of $1.3 billion.

Pleasing vista

Microsoft reported soaring profits for the first quarter of this year, dispelling doubts about the commercial success of its Vista operating system. The computer-software firm reported earnings for the first three months of this year of $4.9 billion — up 65% on the same period in 2006 — on sales of $14.4 billion. US sales of computers operating on Microsoft software surged forward by two-thirds the week after Vista was launched, despite sniffy press reviews.

Shares suspended

Oxonica, the British nanotechnology company, temporarily suspended trading in its shares on 27 April, after receiving notification from a Turkish oil firm that a $12-million contract to supply the oil firm with fuel additives had been cancelled. The contract was ended a month after Oxford-based Oxonica admitted that the results of tests for the oil company had been 'inconclusive' (see Nature 446, 963; 2007). Oxonica is locked in legal dispute with Neuftec, a company registered in the Caribbean island Dominica, over the licensing of a cerium-oxide fuel additive.