31%up in two days easy takings, page-6

has cash and clinical trials me wrong The slightly firmer trend follows a deal announced last month with ­NASDAQ-listed Sigma Alrich, capitalised at $US4.5bn, of St Louis, Missouri. The US company has taken a 10.6% equity in Benitec through a placement of 18 million shares at 17¢ to inject $3.06m cash, plus a $US2m fee plus ongoing royalties for a licence over Benitec’s technology for non-human applications.

Whitten will no doubt tell shareholders about the company’s launch of a human clinical trial due in the first quarter of 2006 on stem-cell therapy for AIDS lymphoma. That will be followed in late 2006 by trials of a therapy for hepatitis C.