Tagatose

Biospherics Inc., the Beltsville company that developed a sugar substitute called D-Tagatose, said yesterday that it is hopeful it will complete a licensing deal soon with a Danish food company to manufacture and market the food additive worldwide.In May, company executives told shareholders they hoped to have the agreement wrapped up by Aug. 15. But the company has been unable to meet that goal."We are negotiating hot and heavy on this. We're hopeful we'll see a positive outcome soon," Richard Levin, vice president and chief operating officer for Biospherics, said yesterday.

Biospherics Inc. of Beltsville has new evidence that its research-stage sugar substitute may also be a leading edge treatment for the most common form of diabetes, a researcher from the University of Maryland told an American Diabetes Association conference in San Francisco yesterday.The evidence is a small study based at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, the first human study aimed at discov- ering whether Biospherics' sugar substitute -- D-tagatose -- may also control the negative effects that diabetics experience from eating many carbohydrates and complex sugars that remain even on diabetes-restricted diets.

No firm on Wall Street has an analyst who follows it. Only one firm anyone outside Wall Street junkies ever heard of even trades it. Legg Mason and T. Rowe Price, two of Baltimore's leading securities firms, say they don't own it.So how has Biospherics Inc. of Beltsville seen its roughly 4 million shares gain $75 million of value in the past week, propelling the tiny biotechnology company that made 5 cents a share in the first half of this year to a...

Biospherics Inc. said it continued its modest break into the black during the fourth quarter, as the Beltsville company boosted revenue from its information services division and prepared for the introduction of its D-tagatose sweetener in international markets.D-tagatose is a sugar made from whey, a little-used byproduct of cheesemaking. Unlike other low-calorie sweeteners, the product has about the same bulk as table sugar and can be used more readily in candies than other substitutes. The company said its sweetener's other advantage is that it does not break down when heated, making it potentially more useful for baking than competitors such as NutraSweet.

Biospherics Inc.'s shares rose 11 percent yesterday after the company said late Monday it will sell its nonfattening sugar, D-tagatose, through distributors in Asia, southeast Asia and the southern Pacific region.The Beltsville company's stock closed trading up 75 cents, at $7.50, on Nasdaq volume of 22,900 shares, compared with the six-month average daily volume of 3,900 shares.The company said it will use initial profits from overseas sales of D-tagatose to pay for tests required for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Stock in Beltsville-based Biospherics Inc. soared 72 percent yesterday, after the firm announced plans to sell a new low-calorie sweetener in overseas markets early next year.Vice President Lee R. Zehner said the plan became viable after the sweetener passed two testing milestones: creation of chocolate candies and spearmint chewing gums, and lab reports showing no toxic effects on animals that ate large amounts of it in addition to their normal diets.The stock shot up nearly 60 percent on the Nasdaq exchange within an hour after Mr. Zehner's announcement.

A Beltsville company that is trying to develop a sugar substitute that can be easily used in baking took a step toward getting the product on the market yesterday by winning a key patent, but the company's chief executive said the product is still years from the market.Biospherics Inc. said it had won a patent for calcium tagatate, a compound it uses in a previously patented process for making D-Tagatose, an artificial sugar derived from whey, a dairy byproduct.The company's chief executive, Gilbert Levin, said the new patent helped intensify the company's talks with potential investors, which are major food companies that would add the sugar substitute to their products.

A Beltsville company that is trying to develop a sugar substitute that can be easily used in baking took a step toward getting the product on the market yesterday by winning a key patent, but the company's chief executive said the product is still years from the market.Biospherics Inc. said it had won a patent for calcium tagatate, a compound it uses in a previously patented process for making D-Tagatose, an artificial sugar derived from whey, a dairy byproduct.The company's chief executive, Gilbert Levin, said the new patent helped intensify the company's talks with potential investors, which are major food companies that would add the sugar substitute to their products.

Biospherics announced that it has received a patent for producing a low-calorie sugar substitute and that it plans to transfer to a Houston-based company the rights to its patented technology for wastewater treatment.Following the announcements yesterday, Biospherics stock closed at $6.50, up $1.50.Biospherics, which is based in Beltsville, provides a broad range of environmental, health and information products and services to governmental agencies and private industry.Called D-tagatose, Biospherics' new product is a variant of ordinary table sugar and has almost the same degree of sweetness, according to Lee Zehner, director of biotechnology programs at Biospherics.

Biospherics Inc. of Beltsville has patented a new process for making a sugar substitute that could make the sweetener cheaper to produce and raises hopes that it could compete in the potentially huge market for sugar substitutes used in commercial baked goods.Biospherics' stock soared yesterday after news of the patent appeared in Saturday's New York Times. But company President Gilbert Levin said Biospherics had actually disclosed the news last month, to little fanfare."We thought the news was out," he said.