Amgen Inc. soundly beat second quarter revenue and earnings estimates, but it was the big biotech's acquisition strategy that was the elephant in the room during the Tuesday evening conference call, as company executives were able to head off attempts to tease out details regarding rumors of its recent – and rejected – $10 billion bid for Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.
If the industry needed another sign that preclinical-stage firms are making a comeback as hot investment prospects – last week's upsized initial public offering by Agios Therapeutics Inc., for example, met with an impressive trading debut on Wall Street – privately held Atyr Pharma Inc. delivered more promising news Monday, disclosing an oversubscribed $49 million Series D round to support work on its rare disease pipeline.
Continuing the trend of biotech's upsized initial public offerings (IPOs), Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc. bumped up both the number of shares offered and priced $2 above its proposed range for gross proceeds topping $106 million.
Analysts remained relatively unconcerned following Celgene Corp.'s news that it halted a Phase III study testing Revlimid (lenalidomide) in front-line elderly B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) due to an imbalance in the number of deaths between the Revlimid and control arms, though up and coming competitors could benefit from the minor setback.
In a deal reminiscent of last year's acquisition of struggling Allos Therapeutics Inc., Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc. nabbed cash-strapped Talon Therapeutics Inc. for a mere $11.3 million in cash up front, gaining rights to Marqibo, a nanoparticle encapsulation version of microtubule inhibitor vincristine, which gained approval last year in a subset of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients.
Qiagen NV's Therascreen EGFR RGQ PCR Kit gained FDA approval alongside Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH's lung cancer drug Gilotrif (afatinib), putting another notch in the win column for the growing companion diagnostics space, though there are still challenges to overcome before the use of companion diagnostics becomes routine in the marketplace.
More than a year after filing an S-1 for an initial public offering (IPO), Oncomed Pharmaceuticals Inc. set proposed terms, seeking to sell 4 million shares priced between $14 and $16.
Heat Biologics, a firm founded in 2008 to develop an off-the-shelf allogeneic immunotherapy technology based on heat-shock proteins, is taking its place in biotech's bustling initial public offering (IPO) queue.
Shares of Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. jumped 51.3 percent Monday after it rejected over the weekend an unsolicited $10 billion bid from Amgen Inc. and said it would seek other potential offers.
