The Day In Review: Forest Laboratories, Inc. Buys Cerexa, Inc. For $480 Million

December 14, 2006 – Forest Labs acquired Cerexa, a privately held anti-infectives company,for $480 million plus a potential $100 million milestone payment; Valeant and Metabasis out-licensed the rights to a hepatitis B drug to Schering-Plough; Canadian biotech OncoGenex filed for an IPO; Adolor will jettison its 35-member sales force; the FDA has said the response from Encysive to the Approvable letter for Thelin is not complete; GenVec received an OK from an interim review of its Phase II/III trial of TNFerade; Shire will begin marketing Mezavant for ulcerative colitis; MGI Pharma completed two Phase III trials of Aloxi Injection; CuraGen reported positive interim results for belinostat; and Avalon reported AVN944 did well against hematologic malignancies. At the close, the Centient Biotech 200™ was 10 points higher at 3950, a rise of .26%. More details...