Momenta Tumbles on FDA News

Shares of Cambridge, MA-based Momenta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MNTA]]) are down more more than 50 percent from yesterday’s close of $13.38 on the news that the company’s lead drug candidate—a generic version of the Sanofi-Aventis blood-thinner Lovenox—has been deemed “not approvable” by the FDA. Momenta is developing the drug in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis in an attempt to capture a piece of Lovenox’s $1.9 billion U.S. market. In a press release, Momenta’s CEO said the company believes it has the data necessary to address the FDA’s concerns, which centered on the drug’s effect on the immune system.

Author: Rebecca Zacks

Rebecca is Xconomy's co-founder. She was previously the managing editor of Physician's First Watch, a daily e-newsletter from the publishers of New England Journal of Medicine. Before helping launch First Watch, she spent a decade covering innovation for Technology Review, Scientific American, and Discover Magazine's TV show. In 2005-2006 she was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rebecca holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Brown University and a master's in science journalism from Boston University.