Big pharma Pfizer (PFE) briefly halted trading Wednesday afternoon to announce that a patent on best-selling arthritis drug Celebrex had been invalidated by a district court. When trading resumed, shares were down nearly 1% in the stock market today. Pfizer had sued five makers of generic drugs — Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA), Mylan (MYL), Watson Laboratories (now part of Actavis (ACT), Lupin Pharmaceuticals and Apotex — that were angling
Leerink Partners upgraded Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA) to outperform Thursday, sending the stock up to a three-year high on the stock market today. Analyst Jason Gerberry wrote that his survey of the multiple-sclerosis market showed strong uptake of the new 40-milligram, thrice-weekly version of Teva’s Copaxone, estimating that about 40% will have switched to it after two years. This is crucial to the company retaining some market share
Drug stocks were moving on merger news in the stock market today as Forest Laboratories (FRX) forestalled an IPO and NuPathe (PATH) looked to start a bidding war between Endo Health Solutions (ENDP) and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA). Forest Labs agreed to pay $2.9 billion for Aptalis, a drugmaker that filed to go public on Dec. 26 after a major reworking by the private equity group TPG Capital. It traded as Axcan Pharma until 2007, when