Shares of small biotech Ophthotech (OPHT) surged 21% in morning trading on the stock market today, after the firm announced a big-pharma partnership for its eye-drug candidate late Monday. Ophthotech inked a deal worth as much as $1 billion with Novartis (NVS) to commercialize Fovista, a treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) now in phase-three testing. Novartis will pay $200 million upfront followed by a series of milestone
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will license chip technology from ARM Holdings (ARMH) as part of a strategy shift to gain more business outside the slowing PC market. ARM’s low-power chip technology is widely used in smartphones, tablets and energy-efficient servers. The announcement by AMD Monday defined a near and midterm road map that will “harness the best characteristics of both the x86 and ARM ecosystems.” It referred to the new effort as
Apple started selling its new-fangled Mac Pro desktop computer online Thursday and already orders are severely backlogged. Within hours, the delivery times slipped from Dec. 30 to sometime in February. So if you want one of Apple ‘s (AAPL) radically redesigned Mac Pro computers, you had better be willing to wait. The high-end desktop computer, targeted at creative professionals, starts at $2,999. A fully loaded machine with all the top-of-the-line specs (12-core Intel (INTC) Xeon E5 processors, AMD (AMD) FirePro D700 GPUs with 6 GB of VRAM, 64 GB of system memory, and 1 terabyte of PCIe-based flash storage) will cost you $9,599. But shipping is free. And if you want a 4K video display for it, Apple suggests you buy a Sharp 32-inch Ultra HD LED monitor for $3,595. That’s because Apple doesn’t offer its own 4K display yet, perhaps awaiting an Apple TV, as IBD has reported. Oh, and…