Wednesday's Health Winners & Losers

Business updates, earnings and the FDA's harsh black box warning nudged a few stocks around on an overall healthy hump day for health care stocks.

Nastech Pharmaceutical(NSTK Quote) said Tuesday after close that spin off its subsidiary MDRNA as an independent company and is transferring its intellectual property and agreements related to RNA interference into MDRNA. Nastech said the move will give it the ability to pursue independent investment to fund MDRNA's operations.

The company said that it expects to pursue the funding in the near-term and will retain significant ownership in MDRNA and plans to issue a dividend to Nastech's shareholders of a portion of the MDRNA equity held by Nastech and to effect the public trading of those securities through a Form 10 filing.

As part of a restructuring, the company said it will concentrate on phase II clinical and partnered programs and cost containment strategies for the near-term and is implementing a workforce reduction plan.

Shares rose 44 cents, or 8.8%, to $5.30. The stock is a component of the Nasdaq biotechnology index, which was up 3.25, or 0.4%, to 855.46.

Mylan(MYL Quote) priced a public offering of common stock at $14 a share and 6.5% mandatory convertible preferred stock at $1,000 a share, expecting net proceeds of $2.5 billion to prepay a portion of loans used to buy Merck KGaA's generics business.