Receptos (RCPT) stock leapt 37% in massive volume to close at 39.94 in the stock market today, following Monday’s late announcement that its oral multiple-sclerosis drug RPC-1063 had reduced brain lesions in a phase-two clinical trial. RPC-1063 is chemically similar to Novartis’ (NVS) Gilenya, but Leerink analyst Marko Kozul wrote in a note Monday that the trial results “suggest it is meaningfully differentiated from Gilenya and other competing
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
Big money flowed into pharma Tuesday as Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly unveiled a giant swap of businesses, while Valeant Pharmaceuticals bid roughly $47 billion for Allergan. Novartis (NVS) agreed to buy Glaxo’s (GSK) oncology business for $14.5 billion, plus up to $1.5 billion in milestone payments depending on how products in the pipeline fare. In turn, Glaxo will pay $7.1 billion for Novartis’ vaccines business. Novartis said it’ll