QLT Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, said it will cease investing in new products and has formed a special committee to review all strategic alternatives, including the sale of some or all of its assets.

The company's board of directors is reviewing proposals from investment bankers and expects to appoint a financial advisor to help the special committee evaluate alternatives.

Boyd Clarke, QLT board chairman, said the board believes the net value of the company's assets exceeds the value represented by the stock price.

"We had hoped to address that disconnect through the deployment of our current strategic plan. However, as the gap continues to widen, we have decided that . . . making significant additional investments in all of our current products and technologies would be inconsistent with our objective of maximizing shareholder value," he noted.

The new strategy comes about six weeks after QLT sought to expand its pipeline of ocular products by purchasing ForSight Newco II Inc. for $42 million. To help finance that deal, QLT said it planned to sell vacant property adjacent to its headquarters, and obtain a mortgage or other financial structure on its headquarters. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 10, 2007.)

Shortly afterward, Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis AG, the company's partner in Visudyne (verteporfin), for certain forms of wet age-related macular degeneration, reported global sales of the product for the third quarter dropped 35.1 percent compared to sales for the third quarter of 2006 and a decrease of 17.9 percent compared to the second quarter of 2007.

Wall Street apparently liked the strategy, with shares of QLT (NASDAQ:QLT) jumping 24 percent, or 93 cents Wednesday, to close at $4.82.