Health Winners & Losers: GTX Inc.
Big-cap biotech regained some ground at the start of the week, inline with the broader markets, on the brink of third quarter earnings.
In clinical news,
GTX Inc.
(GTXI)
said Monday that its muscle drug Ostarine was successful in improving muscle, or lean body mass, in patients with cancer-induced muscle loss in a phase II trial. Shares were up 73 cents, or 4.88%, at $15.70.
Meanwhile,
Lev Pharmaceuticals
said Monday that the
Food and Drug Administration
approved its Cinryze for patients with hereditary angioedema (HAE) as a preventive treatment for attacks. It's the first
approved in the U.S. for HAE, a rare disorder that causes periodic, acute episodes of painful swelling in patient's extremities, gastrointestinal tract and airways.
In July,
ViroPharma
(VPHM)
announced it was buying Lev Pharmaceuticals. ViroPharma shares were up $1.28, or 13.38%, at $10.85 Monday. Stanford Research upgraded ViroPharma to buy from hold, upping its price target to $13 from $11. Rodman and Renshaw upgraded the stock to market outperform with an $18 price target.
Meanwhile, Robert Baird upgraded
Celgene
(CELG) - Get Report
to outperform from neutral, raising its price target to $66 from $65. That stock was trading up $3.88, or 7.1%, at $58.40.
Affymetrix
(AFFX)
shares fell $1.20, or 22%, to $4.24 after the company announced preliminary third-quarter results below expectations. The company said it expects revenue of around $75 million; analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected $90 million. The company said increased competition for academic research funding and continued softness in industrial spending hurt global sales.
Affymetrix was the only component f the Nasdaq biotechnology index that wasn't in positive territory. The index added 33.46, or 5.4%, to 651.79.
Genentech
( DNA) kicks off the biotech earnings season on Tuesday, with
Gilead
(GILD) - Get Report
following Thursday. Analysts, on average, are pegging 88 cents a share on revenue of $3.36 billion from Genentech, and they expect 49 cents a share on $1.32 billion from Gilead.
Use our third-quarter
as a guide when you review the upcoming earnings releases.
