Thursday's Health Winners & Losers

Transaction and regulatory updates weren't enough to motivate movement in lukewarm health indices Thursday.

One stock on the uptick was Isis Pharmaceuticals(ISIS Quote), which gained 78 cents, or 4.9%, to $13.38, after announcing a deal with Johnson & Johnson's(JNJ Quote) Ortho-McNeil to develop and market drugs for metabolic diseases such as type II diabetes and obesity.

Isis will get a $45 million licensing fee upfront and as much as $230 million more in milestone payments. Meanwhile, Ortho-McNeil gets worldwide development and commercialization rights to two of Isis' diabetes development candidates, ISIS 325568 and ISIS 377131.

In another deal that closed today, Inverness Medical Innovations(IMA Quote) completed its $326.3 million buyout of diagnostics company Cholestech Corp. after Cholestech's shareholders approved the merger at a meeting today.

Cholestech stockholders received 0.4 shares of Inverness common stock for each Cholestech share, resulting in a total issuance of some 6.8 million shares of Inverness common stock. Options to purchase shares of Cholestech outstanding prior to the completion of the acquisition were converted into a right to acquire Inverness shares, at the same exchange ratio of 0.4. Inverness shares added 79 cents, or 1.6%, to $49.35.

Elsewhere, in regulatory updates: Spectrum Pharmaceuticals(SPPI Quote) said Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration accepted an amendment to its new-drug application (NDA) for ISO-Vorin for injection, which is used after the chemotherapy treatment methotrexate to treat osteogenic sarcoma, a type of bone cancer.