Health Winners & Losers: Novartis

Novartis climbs on data from a kidney cancer study.
By Elizabeth Trotta ,

Health indices were fairly flat at the week's start with scattered clinical and regulatory news.

Novartis

(NVS) - Get Report

shares rose $1.01, or 1.9%, to $52.37, after the company issued a press release with more details on a late-stage study on its everolimus in patients with advanced kidney cancer. According to interim results from its RECORD-1 study, the treatment extended the time patients went without tumor progression by 2.1 months and reduced the risk of disease progression by 70%. In late February, the company said that an independent data safety monitoring board stopped the study early after interim results showed significantly better progression free survival in patients who received everolimus vs. placebo.

In earnings, medical device maker

Medtronic

(MDT) - Get Report

is set to report quarterly results on Tuesday. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are expecting 73 cents a share on revenue of $3.7 billion. Investors traded optimistically, taking shares up 91 cents, or 1.9%, to $47.94

Two analyst actions to note (that seemingly didn't affect stocks): Lehman Brothers upped its price target for

Elan

(ELN)

to $19 from $16 -- but the stock was down $1.20, or 4.4%, at $25.85. And Soleil downgraded

Hologic

(HOLX) - Get Report

to hold from buy -- but, that stock added 91 cents, or 4.4%, rising to $21.84.

The Amex biotechnology index was flat at 753.10. Components

Illumina

(ILMN) - Get Report

and

Cephalon

(CEPH)

were on the rise, garnering 1% and 1.4%, respectively. On the falling side, components

Biogen Idec

(BIIB) - Get Report

and

Amylin

(AMLN)

gave up 1.3% and 1%, respectively.

In a

Securities and Exchange Commission

filing last week, activist investor Cal Icahn -- recently working to champion

Yahoo!'s

(YHOO)

board -- has also upped his take in Biogen to 9.9 million on March 31, from 8.3 million at the end of 2007, and has acquired 6.3 million shares of Amylin.

The Amex pharmaceutical index fared slightly better, adding 1.60, or 0.5%, to 303.49, aided by a 2.6% gain in

AstraZeneca

(AZN) - Get Report

and a 1.1% gain in

GlaxoSmithKline

(GSK) - Get Report

, among others. Glaxo said Monday that European regulators gave it a green light to market bird flu vaccine Prepandrix.

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