In a move that has not come as a surprise to the biotech venture capital industry, Sydney's Apollo Life Sciences is winding up operations and selling off its assets after it failed to enlist enough investors to keep it afloat.

Apollo has what it describes as a broad asset base, including its human expressed protein division Apollo Cytokine Research, an over the counter cosmetics business, and two platform technologies for the oral and transdermal delivery of protein-based therapeutics such as insulin and an anti-TNF blocker.

However, industry sources say the company, while promising much, was not able to generate enough revenue or sound investor confidence to ensure growth or stability.

In a statement to the Australian stock exchange, Apollo's founder and CEO John Priest said the company was hoping to achieve an orderly wind down of the company and to licence or sell off the OTC and proteins business and its intellectual property.

ALS has sought comment from the company.

A new investment fund has been licensed by the Federal Government to operate under its Innovation Investment Fund.

Brandon Capital Partners' BBF1 fund has committed capital of $40 million, half of which was contributed by the Government and the other half by superannuation fund managers Westscheme from WA and South Australia's Statewide Superannuation.

Innovation Minister Senator Kim Carr said it was anticipated that the investment portfolio will have a range of investments in the areas of medical devices, human therapeutics and associated diagnostics, and supporting life science technologies.

It is the 11th fund to be licensed under the program, which now provides $420 million in capital. Program participants can secure up to $20 million each from the Government if matched by a minimum dollar-for-dollar investment by the private sector.

Melbourne's Phosphagenics has received ethics approval to commence treating patients with type 1 diabetes in a Phase II clinical trial using its transdermal insulin delivery system, TPM/Insulin.

The Phase II is due to commence next month and will be conducted at Q-Pharm's clinical facilities in Brisbane.

The trial is a randomised, single-blinded trial which aims to assess the efficacy of TPM/Insulin. Ethics approval was granted following safety and efficacy trials in patients with type 2 diabetes, carried out at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

"The Australian clinical trials conducted to date have demonstrated that our TPM/Insulin formulation can safely penetrate through human skin and deliver insulin into the blood stream over a sustained period of time without any adverse events," Phosphagenics' head of research and development, Dr Esra Ogru, said.

Sydney-based separations company NuSep has released early results in a Phase I trial of its SpermSep CS10 sperm separation device.

The device has been trialled at the Westmead Fertility Clinic in Sydney, with early results proving positive - two live births out of nine couples who undertook sperm separation.

The SpermSep uses an electrical field to separate normal sperm from damaged sperm and has the potential to increase the success rate of assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatments.

Developed together with Professor John Aitken from the University of Newcastle, the device works on the principle that sperm with the most negatively charged membranes are likely to have the least DNA damage.

Medical device company Ventracor announced on Monday that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had granted unconditional approval for the US Destination Therapy Trial of the company's VentrAssist Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD).

Ventracor said there were now 20 hospitals in the US trained and ready to implant the device in both Bridge To Transplant (BTT) and Destination Therapy (DT) trials, and 17 of those have enrolled at least one patient.

"There have been 218 patients implanted with the VentrAssist at 32 hospitals worldwide, including three hospitals in the last month who implanted their first VentrAssist," the company said in a statement.

"There is over 110 years of cumulative patient experience, and the longest duration patient is still surviving 3.5 years after implant."

Ventracor CEO Peter Crosby said the company was pleased that the granting of unconditional approval of the DT trial removed an obstacle to recruitment of reimbursement in some centres."

Sydney-headquartered Arana Therapeutics - the result of last year's merger between Peptech and EvoGenix - announced that it had commenced recruitment for a Phase II trial in psoriasis for its lead anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF) drug candidate ART621.

ART621 works by blocking the action of TNF, a protein which is involved in generation of inflammation and linked to rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn's disease, the company said.

The study is Arana's first trial following the merger and will provide repeat dose, pharmacokinetic, safety and preliminary anti-TNF efficacy data for ART621 in a psoriasis population.

The results will also be used to inform the design of longer duration clinical studies in rheumatoid arthritis and other indications.

Arana CEO Dr John Chiplin said the company expected to file an investigational new drug application with the FDA for the compound in rheumatoid arthritis by the end of September and to commence a Phase II trial by the end of the year.

ART621 will go up against such established drugs as Remicade, Humira and Enbrel.

Catapult Genetics, a livestock DNA testing company based in Brisbane, has been sold to global animal health giant Pfizer.

The company was formed when Australian biotech Genetic Solutions merged with NZ's Catapult Systems in 2006. It is primarily owned by private equity firm Kestrel Capital, along with NZ's AgResearch, Meat & Wool NZ, the CSIRO and founders Gerard Davis and Jay Hetzel.

It has offices in Brisbane and Dunedin and markets product brands such as GeneSTAR, the SureTRAK system and SireTRACE.

Catapult's staff and management will remain with the company under its new owner.

New Zealand's Living Cell Technologies has received a fourth US patent for its lead product DiabeCell.

The patent covers the use of DiabeCell in the treatment of type I diabetes and includes the technique for preparing encapsulated neonatal porcine pancreatic islets.

LCT has several families of patents which have been filed worldwide including those for Neurotrophin Cell (LCT's product in pre-clinical development for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases) as well as those surrounding methods of encapsulating live cells for human therapeutics.

And finally, radiopharmaceutical company Cyclopharm has finalised an agreement to establish its first PET radiopharmacy in Sydney.

The facilities will be the first commercial radiopharmaceutical production centre in NSW and will be based at the Macquarie University Medical School campus and Dalcross Private Hospital, which together are building a new private teaching hospital at the Macquarie University Research Park.

The site will house a cyclotron and a commercial production facility for the cancer diagnostic molecule FDG, which has been in short supply recently.

Construction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2009.