WASHINGTON -- Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., chairman of the Ways and Means health subcommittee, challenged Amgen Inc.'s right to receive "gross" profits from Medicare reimbursements for its Epogen erythropoietin at a hearing Thursday on national health insurance reform. Stark sent a letter to the General Accounting Office on Tuesday requesting that it investigate options for lowering government costs for EPO and other single-source drugs, according to the lawmaker's office. Stark said the
Immunex Corp. stock lost $2 on Thursday, closing at $39.75, amid conflicting estimates of its share of the GM-CSF market and ethical concerns about a long-term purchasing agreement with American Healthcare Systems. Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Jeffrey Casdin wrote that Immunex appeared to be losing market share to Hoechst AG, its co- marketing partner for granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor, and that the deal with AmHS appeared to be aimed at stemming the erosion. Emphasizing that
Liposome Technology Inc. and Escagenetics Corp. said Thursday that they will explore combining LTI's Stealth liposomes with taxol produced by Escagenetics. Taxol, currently derived from the bark and needles of the Pacific yew tree, has been shown to be effective in women with advanced ovarian and breast cancer. Each company will bear its own costs in an exploratory phase, which could take three to six months or longer, said Raymond Moshy, president and chief executive of Escagenetics. The San
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration's approval on Wednesday of the AIDS drug ddI broke new ground and may change the future development, approval and regulation of drugs for fatal diseases. The agency approved Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s ddI (dideoxyinosine) for use by patients who cannot tolerate AZT, which is the only other approved AIDS therapeutic, or are failing to respond to AZT therapy. Both drugs, plus the not-yet-approved ddC (dideoxycytidine), are nucleoside analogs that
Somatix Therapy Corp. said Wednesday that it has exclusive rights to a broad patent covering gene therapy that recently issued in Europe. The patent covers the use of genetically modified epithelial cells as a delivery vehicle for genetic material, regardless of the mode of gene introduction. Thus, methods such as homologous recombination, retroviral gene transfer and others are covered by the patent. Epithelial cells line the inner and outer surfaces of organs. In its cancer program, Somatix
Stock of Biogen Inc. closed up $1.13 at $34.38 on Wednesday after Prudential Bache analyst Joseph Edelman raised his rating to "buy" from "hold" on the Cambridge, Mass., company. His 12-month price target is $45 per share. Edelman said that the company's Hirulog anti-coagulant should come in for increased investor attention at the November meeting of the American Heart Association. Hirulog has the potential to replace heparin, currently a $500 million generic product, said Edelman. Hirulog
Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp. has raised more than $59 million in an enlarged secondary offering of 2.6 million shares of common stock priced at $22.75 per share. The San Diego company, which had originally planned to sell 2 million shares, has 17.1 million shares outstanding after the offering. Alliance stock (NASDAQ:ALLP) closed at $22.50, down 63 cents, on Wednesday. Alliance now has sufficient funds for two-and-a-half to three years, said spokesman Stuart Gauld. The company is developing
Life Technologies Inc. has concluded an agreement giving it exclusive marketing rights to sell Whole Chromosome Paints, a novel staining technology, to the research community. The technology, co-developed by Imagenetics of Naperville, Ill., and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, uses specially developed fluorescent dyes to stain chromosomes for much more rapid and accurate detection of abnormalities. Researchers expect the technology to help explicate the genetic basis
Ecogen Inc. said Wednesday that it has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to register 11.9 million shares of common stock. All of the shares, which include shares underlying certain warrants and options, are owned by existing stockholders of Ecogen. About 83 percent of the shares are owned by New York investor David Blech, who is Ecogen's largest shareholder. He owns 6.1 million shares, excluding warrants and options, or 41.7 percent of all shares outstanding. The Langhorne, Pa
DISPOSABLE DIAGNOSTIC TESTS This is another profile of a private biotech company that presented itself to venture capitalists attending the Mid- Atlantic Venture Fair '91 in Baltimore. ActiMed Laboratories Inc. The Mt. Laurel, N.J., company is developing single-use, disposable diagnostic tests. ActiMed has developed advanced prototypes of a total cholesterol test for consumers and a full lipid panel (total cholesterol, HDL and triglycerides) for doctors, and plans to file for Food and Drug
Nova Pharmaceutical Corp. has received a Phase I small business innovation research grant to assess the therapeutic potential of certain of its proprietary compounds in the treatment of stroke and epilepsy. The $50,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health will support further characterization of the Nova compounds that block receptors for kainate and AMPA in the nervous system. The receptors have been implicated in the two widespread neurologic disorders. The Baltimore-based company
American Biogenetic Sciences Inc. will redeem on Nov. 14 its outstanding class A warrants to purchase common stock, the company said Wednesday. Prior to that time, each warrant may be exercised to purchase for $3 one share of common stock (NASDAQ:MABX) and one class B warrant. The class B warrant will be exercisable for one share of common at $4.50. Unexercised warrants will be redeemed by the Notre Dame, Ind., company for 5 cents each. ABS is developing monoclonal antibody-based products to
Cell Genesys Inc. will participate in a joint AIDS research effort that is being funded by a government grant of $1.7 million, the company announced Wednesday. The technology of the Foster City, Calif., company will be the centerpiece of the effort to produce human T cells that can be transplanted into AIDS patients to treat their infections and malignancies. Over a three-year period, the grant will help support a collaboration with scientists at Harvard's Deaconess Hospital and the Medical
The American Stock Exchange on Wednesday said it will begin trading options in six biotechnology stocks on Oct. 21 under more liberal options listing criteria recently approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies being added are California Biotechnology Inc., Cytogen Corp., Epitope Inc., Genzyme Corp., Immunex Corp. and Xoma Corp. Options on these stocks have been chosen for listing on at least one other exchange. Investors pay to purchase an option, which is a right to
Cancer researchers at the National Institutes of Health have begun a new gene therapy treatment, this time combining genetically altered cancer cells with lymphocytes activated by interleukin-2 in an attempt to attack an otherwise untreatable skin cancer. The team, led by Dr. Steven Rosenberg, on Tuesday injected tumor cells altered with the gene for tumor necrosis factor (TNF) back into a 46-year-old man from whom the cells had previously been taken. Rosenberg's team expects that boosted
The Liposome Co. Inc. will receive four years of research funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop a drug formulation for an AIDS infection as part of a National Cooperative Drug Discovery Grant. The Princeton, N.J., company (NASDAQ:LIPO) will receive commercial rights to any lipid-based drug developed under the cooperative effort, which is funded by a total of $3.1 million to collaborators at four centers. How the funds will be shared was not disclosed. The effort will focus
Idec Pharmaceuticals Corp. said Tuesday it may have to obtain a license to a recently issued patent to market two of its products in the United States. The patent, which issued Oct. 1, covers the use of anti- idiotype antibodies for the treatment of solid tumors. Wistar Institute of Philadelphia is the assignee for the patent, No. 5,053,224. Anti-ids mimic antigens by binding to the same antibody sites, which are called idiotypes. The Idec products potentially covered by the patent, I-Mel-1
WASHINGTON -- ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. and its Viratek Inc. subsidiary have agreed to avoid violations of securities laws in a settlement of a complaint brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC said Tuesday. The SEC filed the complaint on Monday, alleging that the companies made false statements regarding the results of clinical trials of the effectiveness of ribavirin, an anti-viral drug, against AIDS. According to the complaint, during January and February 1987, the
Ribi ImmunoChem Research Inc. said Tuesday that it plans to begin a multicenter Phase III trial of its Melacine melanoma therapeutic vaccine. About 27,600 new cases of melanoma and about 6,300 deaths are reported in the United States annually. Median survival for patients with disseminated melanoma receiving chemotherapy is about 12 months. In a Phase II trial, median survival for patients receiving Melacine was 29 months. Life extension will be one of the key end points of the open- label
Spain has become the fourth European country to approve the sale Bio-Technology General Corp.'s recombinant human growth hormone to treat short stature, the New York-based company said Tuesday. Spain, with $100 million in hGH sales in 1990, is the largest single market for hGH in Europe, according to BTGC. Total European sales are about $300 million annually. SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals will market the product under the name Eskatrope. The drug has received approvals in the Netherlands
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., chairman of the Ways and Means health subcommittee, challenged Amgen Inc.'s right to receive "gross" profits from Medicare reimbursements for its Epogen erythropoietin at a hearing Thursday on national health insurance reform. Stark sent a letter to the General Accounting Office on Tuesday requesting that it investigate options for lowering government costs for EPO and other single-source drugs, according to the lawmaker's office. Stark said the