SHARES in ProStrakan yesterday slipped almost 3% after the Borders-based specialist drug company revealed that the US Food and Drug Administration had missed the deadline for action on Sancuso, the company's cancer treatment.

SHARES in ProStrakan yesterday slipped almost 3% after the Borders-based specialist drug company revealed that the US Food and Drug Administration had missed the deadline for action on Sancuso, the company's cancer treatment.

However, the company, which has its headquarters in Galashiels, said the delay had nothing to do with the product itself - a skin patch for the prevention of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting - but was related to internal resources at the FDA.

The FDA's deadline had been yesterday.

However, ProStrakan, which employs around 70 of its 300 staff in Scotland, added that it remained confident of gaining approval and that it was continuing to plan for the American launch of Sancuso in the second half of 2008.

A company spokesman said: "Although the FDA has missed its previously stated action dates, the company understands that this has been due to a lack of resources at the FDA rather than review issues."

In October last year, ProStrakan struck a potential multi-million-pound deal with pharmaceuticals giant Quintiles Transnational to sell its products in the US, and Wilson Totten, the company's chief executive, described it as "probably one of the most significant steps the company will ever take". At the time he said: "It gives us our own sales force in the largest pharmaceuticals market in the world."

Under the terms of that agreement, US-based Quintiles' subsidiary NovaQuest will make upfront and milestone payments of around £5m in cash over three years to fund a 75-person sales force to market and promote ProStrakan's three planned US offerings - Sancuso, testosterone deficiency treatment gel Tostran and anal-fissures ointment Rectogesic.

Shares in the company, which was created by the merger of Strakan and French biotechnology group ProSkelia, yesterday fell 2.8%, or 2.25p, to 77.25p.

Meanwhile, ProStrakan added that it would provide the next update when there was more certainty around an FDA action date.