Staff Writer

Word that Icagen Inc. enlisted J.P. Morgan to help figure out next steps sent the battered company's below-dollar stock upward by 48 percent, as partner Pfizer Inc. hangs onto its collaboration with Icagen, targeting sodium channels for the treatment of pain.

Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based Icagen said J.P. Morgan would be looking into options that could include more deals or outright sale of the company but would provide no updates until the process is finished, which could take two more quarters or longer.

Since pain is one of Pfizer's high-priority therapeutic areas, the pharma giant might investigate acquiring Icagen. The companies still are in the process of identifying compounds targeting specific sodium channels, under the potential $1 billion-plus deal signed two summers ago, according to Icagen's first-quarter earnings update in March. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 15, 2007.)

Pfizer, of New York, has several drugs for pain on the market, and is pursuing an internal Phase III program with tanezumab, a fully humanized monoclonal antibody that targets nerve growth factor. Tanezumab has proven promising so far in patients with osteoarthritic knee pain.

Icagen's deal with Pfizer, of New York, followed a Phase III setback with senicapoc for sickle cell disease and the loss of two other pharma partners. In June of the same year, Icagen said McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of New Brunswick, N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson, would terminate the firms' partnership for senicapoc as of September, after the April halt of the Phase III trial. A data monitoring panel said senicapoc, which targets the IK channel, was unlikely to meet its primary endpoint of reducing crisis rate in sickle cell disease. Icagen's stock fell more than 24 percent.

Next to drop off, in August, was Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., of New York, which decided not to pursue development of the lead compound discovered in a long-standing deal targeting atrial fibrillation.

Meanwhile, Icagen has research efforts directed at several ion channel targets, including TRPA1 and calcium-release-activated calcium channels, for central nervous system and inflammatory diseases, where a series of lead compounds has been identified in each area. Work on T-type calcium channels for chronic pain goes on, too.

Icagen said in earnings-related paperwork filed with the SEC that it had about $29.3 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of March, enough to operate through the second quarter of 2010. The company's stock (NASDAQ:ICGN) closed Friday at 57 cents, up 9 cents, or almost 19 percent, after trading as high as 74 cents.