BioHealth Morning Daily, Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Cepheid Inc. (NASDAQ: CPHD) received FDA clearance for the first on-demand diagnostic test for life threatening MRSA and staphylococcus aureus from patient positive blood cultures. No shares have traded yet.
Emergent Biosolutions, Inc. (NYSE: EBS) announced that the U.S. government will purchase an additional 14.5 million doses of BioThrax as part of the anthrax shield under a new contract valued at up to $404 million. Its market cap is $390 million and its 2007 revenues were $182.9 million in total.
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) won a rather large judgment after a U.S. District Court in Delaware entered a final judgment including accrued interest, which comes to approximately $1.2 billion in favor of J&J’s Cordis unit. It won this against Medtronic (MDT) and Boston Scientific (BSX) in cases involving the original balloon expandable stent patent.
Universal Health (NYSE: UHS) is among some hospital downgrades by UBS this morning. It seems that the hospital sector is not immune from a rapidly weakening economy. Its rating was cut to Neutral from Buy. FULL HOSPITAL DOWNGRADE LIST.
Jon Ogg
October 1, 2008
Small Player Joins Government Anthrax Fight (EBS)
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) has received a contract from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for over $24.3 million to fund the further development of Emergent’s anthrax monoclonal antibody AVP-21D9.
This contract will be jointly administered through the Office of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of the National Institutes of Health).
The life of this contracts is four years and is to provide funding for scale-up of the manufacturing process, for non-clinical studies, and for a Phase I clinical trial.
Emergent noted in the release that it anticipates that it will receive approximately $20 million over the first two contract years in support of the scale-up of the manufacturing process and the completion of a Phase I clinical trial. The company also expects to focus on completing certain non-clinical studies during the final two years of the contract.
For a drug company or biotech stock, this one is still rather small with a $405 million market cap. At $13.60, the stock is toward the higher end of the $4.40 to $14.39 trading range of the last year.
Jon C. Ogg
September 3, 2008