East Coast Life Sciences Roundup: Sarepta, Vertex, Celsion, More

candidates failed. The drug, ferric citrate (Zerenex), met both its primary and secondary goals in a Phase III clinical trial for patients on kidney dialysis. Keryx’s stock price soared from $3.43 last Friday to $9.08 by the close on Thursday.

—On the flip side, Celsion (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CLSN]]), based in Lawrenceville, NJ, reported on Thursday that its lead drug candidate Thermodox, a proprietary reformulation of the chemo drug doxorubicin, did not even come close to meet its goals in Phase III clinical trial for treatment of primary liver cancer. That failure could endanger a development deal Celsion signed just last week with Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical, a major Chinese drug company, which could be worth up to $100 million.

—Genzyme, the Cambridge, MA subsidiary of Sanofi (NYSE: [[ticker:SNY]]), got some good news on Tuesday when the FDA approved the drug mipomersen (Kynamro) as a treatment for a rare inherited disease that causes very high levels of cholesterol in the blood. Genzyme developed the drug with Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ISIS]]) of Carlsbad, CA, and Genzyme will now pay Isis a $25 million milestone payment.

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Author: Catherine Arnst

Catherine Arnst is an award- winning writer and editor specializing in science and medicine. Catherine was Senior Writer for medicine at BusinessWeek for 13 years, where she wrote numerous cover stories and wrote extensively for the magazine’s website, including contributing to two blogs. She followed a broad range of issues affecting medicine and health and held primary responsibility for covering the battle in Washington over health care reform. Catherine has also written for the Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report and The Daily Beast, and was Director of Content Development for the health practice at Edelman Public Relations for two years. Prior to joining BusinessWeek she was the London-based European Science Correspondent for Reuters News Service. She won the 2004 Business Journalist of the Year award from London’s World Leadership Forum, and in 2003 was the first recipient of the ACE Reporter Award from the European School of Oncology for her five-year body of work on cancer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University.