The company - which no longer works on cloning activities - had wanted to re-focus its business around the development of a surgical glue that stops bleeding called Fibrin I.

But PPL failed to win sufficient support from shareholders and so the company said it was seeking "an orderly sale of the business".

News of the sale came as the firm unveiled a pre-tax loss of �13.5m for the first half of the year.

Setbacks

As well as cloning Dolly the Sheep in 1996, PPL said last year it had cloned pigs capable of providing organs for humans.

But PPL's US business which developed the pigs was sold off earlier this year.

The firm's British stem cell research - which was behind the cloning of Dolly the Sheep - was closed last year.

PPL suffered a setback in June this year when plans to develop a new lung drug with German firm Bayer were put on hold.

This left the company with just the Fibrin I project to pursue, but this was not expected to go on sale commercially until 2006.

PPL said that "although the majority of (its) major institutional shareholders were supportive of the sealants plan, the required level of support to go forward was insufficient," the firm said.

Chief executive Geoff Cook and a number of directors are also to step down.