Business news in brief

Campbell Soup Co. said it reached an agreement to buy the maker of the popular Royal Dansk Danish butter cookies sold in round blue tins. The price the Camden company agreed to pay for Kelsen Group A/S, which is based in Nørre Snede, Denmark, and sells cookies in 85 countries, was not disclosed. Kelsen had $180 million in net sales last year and employs 366, Campbell said. Highlighting Kelsen's presence in China, Campbell's chief executive Denise Morrison said in a news release that the deal would help Campbell toward its goal of reaching "new consumers through expansion into higher-growth spaces, including fast-growing emerging markets." Campbell last week completed the purchase of Plum Organics, a producer of food and snacks for babies and children. - Harold Brubaker

Cancer Treatment Centers of America plans to open a $14.5 million cell-transplant and cell-therapy unit at its Philadelphia location July 1, a spokeswoman said. The 17,000-square-foot unit will include eight patient rooms and facilities to treat diseases such as acute and chronic leukemias, lymphomas, and multiple myeloma. CTCA plans an opening celebration June 27 including a performance by the Pointer Sisters. The hospital's new unit, which will employ 20 to start, is part of a $40 million, 90,000-square-foot expansion in the city's Crescentville section. - Harold Brubaker

Alpha Card Services, which provides credit-card and other services to merchants, has moved its corporate headquarters to Trevose from Huntingdon Valley, the company said. Alpha, which employs 53, including 42 in Trevose, said it will a keep a warehouse at its Huntingdon Valley location. The company also has a regional office in Roseville, Calif. - Harold Brubaker

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., which said six months ago it would focus on treatments for respiratory and central-nervous-system illnesses, announced it will acquire U.S.-based inhaler developer MicroDose Therapeutx. It will pay $40 million for MicroDose's outstanding shares and as much as $125 million in additional payments, plus royalties, Israel-based Teva, which has its Americas headquarters in North Wales, Montgomery County, said in a statement. MicroDose is developing MDT-637 for respiratory syncytial virus, which infects the lungs and breathing passages. - Bloomberg News

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay as much as $1 billion to buy Aragon Pharmaceuticals Inc. and gain the closely held company's experimental prostate cancer drug. Aragon will receive an initial cash payment of $650 million, New Brunswick-based J&J said in a statement. Additional payments totaling as much as $350 million may follow if San Diego-based Aragon's prostate cancer program achieves certain milestones, J&J said. Aragon's lead compound, ARN-509, is in the second of three stages usually required for U.S. regulatory approval and may complement Zytiga, the prostate cancer treatment J&J unveiled two years ago. - Bloomberg News

Google Inc. has resolved a shareholder lawsuit blocking a long-delayed stock split, clearing the way for the Internet search leader to issue a new class of nonvoting shares later this year. The settlement, announced Monday, came on the eve of a scheduled Delaware Chancery Court trial that threatened to cast an unflattering light on cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, accused in the suit of engineering the stock split in a way that unfairly benefits them while shortchanging other shareholders. The split calls for a new class of "C" stock with no voting power to be issued for each share of an existing category of "A" voting stock. - AP

For the first time since 2006, most U.S. home builders are optimistic about home sales. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Builder Sentiment Index released Monday leaped to 52 this month from 44 in May, the largest monthly increase since 2002. A reading above 50 indicates more builders view sales conditions as good. Measures of customer traffic, current sales conditions, and builders' outlook for single-family-home sales over the next six months also were at their highest levels in seven years. - AP

Netflix is going to start running original TV series from DreamWorks Animation. Financial terms were not disclosed. Netflix Inc. says the multiyear agreement includes more than 300 hours of new programming. The first series is expected to begin airing in 2014. - AP

America's slowdown in medical costs may be turning into a trend, rather than a mere pause. A report Tuesday from accounting and consulting giant PwC projects lower overall growth in medical costs for next year. If the calculations are correct, cost spikes because of the new health-care law should be contained within a relatively narrow market segment. "There are some underlying changes to the system that are having an impact, and we can expect lower increases as we come out of the recession," said Mike Thompson of PwC's Health Research Institute, which produced the study. Cost "is still going up, but not as much as it used to." But self-employed people and others who buy coverage individually could see an increase in premiums in 2014, the report said. - AP