Active deactivates in U.K.

While some Swedish biotech companies are worried that the exit of Pharmacia and Astra could limit their local opportunities, Active Biotech AB is betting that refocusing its efforts in the growing biotech center in the Medicon Valley region of Southern Sweden and Northern Denmark will pay off. The company is leaving its offices in Cambridge, U.K., Europe's hottest biotech cluster, to fulfill a promise made to shareholders to save money.

Active (SSE:ACTI, Lund, Sweden) is shifting all the preclinical research now based at Actinova Ltd. (Cambridge) to Lund and has sold its SBL Vaccins premises in Solna, Sweden, for SEK 190 million ($22.3 million)...