Dolly-the-Sheep firm for sale

DOLLY-the-Sheep company PPL Therapeutics was finally put down today as it was prepared for sale and instantly dispatched three of its senior directors, led by chief executive Geoff Cook.

KPMG Corporate Finance is to handle the sale, either as a whole or of separate products. It follows a series of setbacks for the company, once valued at £533m after publicity generated by the cloning of Dolly the Sheep in July 1996.

The news came as PPL said losses had almost doubled at the interim stage to £13.48m. The company has not made a profit since it listed, with losses totalling £109m.

Today's sell-off follows a long decline that led to the ousting of founder Ron James, who floated the company in June 1996.

The first cloning of an animal generated massive public interest, but the firm failed to turn science into business. Critics said James spent too much time on science and not enough on developing marketable products.

He was succeeded last year by Cook, who immediately abandoned a £42m manufacturing plant in Scotland. Shortly afterwards PPL quit a joint venture with German pharmaceuticals giant Bayer and admitted the failure of its treatment for emphysema.

Hedge fund group Metage Capital has built up a 20% stake in the company over the past few months. Last June it tried to elect a non-executive director to the board as a 'shareholder appointed watchdog'.

The move failed and Metage forecast that the company might go bankrupt.

The sale includes Fibrin, a glue used to stop bleeding during complicated surgery.

It also has recBSSL, a treatment for infants who cannot produce normal levels of lipase, leading to impaired digestion and absorption of fat.

PPL shares rose 1/2p to 5 1/2p on hopes of shareholders sharing in its £12m cash pile.

Dream come true that died

IT WAS the most feted scientific breakthrough of the age. The successful birth of Dolly the Sheep, the world's first cloned new-born mammal at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, captured the world's imagination like no other advance in biotechnology.

It triggered a wave of publicity for PPL, the company behind the 'nuclear transfer' technology that made Dolly possible, which was transformed overnight from obscure 'boffin stock' to £500m share market star.

Yet if ever a story proves that good science - however high profile - does not necessarily translate into financial rewards, it is PPL. Only just over seven years since Dolly's birth, the PPL dream is in ruins.

Dolly is dead, having been 'euthanased' - in industry parlance - after contracting lung cancer and arthritis, and the technology that created her has been sold for a song after commercial applications proved frustratingly thin on the ground.

It had been hoped that cloning could lead to improved food production or be used to give animals genes that could help cure human diseases. Other scientific breakthroughs have fallen by the wayside, most crushingly a treatment for emphysema, which had to be abandoned earlier this year.

It is the latest in a string of examples where inspired British science did all the hard work, only for other countries to reap the long-term commercial benefits.

The British aero-scientist Sir Frank Whittle invented the jet engine in the Thirties, but it was the US aircraft industry that went on to dominate the skies after the war.