Caution is still on as we have had big moves YTD and speculative stocks are selling off. High flyers Amarin (AMRN $16.10) is down 4.85% on volume of  6.85M shares while Ariad (ARIA $8.14) was down 3.2% on volume of 1.5M shares.. Vertex(VRTX $48.04) down 2.69% coinciding with comments from the FDA that the Merck HCV protease inhibitor drug boceprevir appears to be more efficacious than drugs currently on the market but had questions about how the drug would be combined with other medicines. The FDA will review the Vertex (VRTX ) HCV drug (telaprevir) on thursday. About 4M people are infected with the HCV virus with a near term market potential in the $600M range for the drug.

Major ETF’s FBT,IBB and XBI were down 0.4-0.5%.

NuPathe (PATH $7.92) was up 7.9% on no news.We covered the stock during the recent JPMorgan Conference. The Company filed its NDA for Zelrix transdermal patch for treatment of acute migraine with an FDA date for approval by August 29,2011. Multiple data presentaions and a possible product launch are coming later this year.Cash position as of Dec 31 ,2010 was $39M.

Cephalon (CEPH $76) is trying to peak pending the $73 all cash buyout offer from Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX). Valeant has set a deadline of May 12 for Cephalon to accept the offer. The Cephalon Board has filed a Consent Revocation Statement implying that the price is too low and that CEPH needs more time to evaluate the offer. Cephalon has been positioned in the Rayno Life Science model portfolio since 2/2/09 and the stock performance has been disappointing until the offer from Valeant. There may be limited up-side to the stock from the $77 level ($77.59 as a 52 week high).

Valeant Pharmaceuticals Responds to Cephalon Board’s Letter – Yahoo! Finance

Cephalon Files Definitive Consent Revocation Statement, Commences Mailing to Shareholders – Yahoo! Finance

Pin It on Pinterest