June 17, 2005 For the second day in a row, biotech put together a solid gain and outpaced the gains of the general market. The Centient Biotech 200 rose almost 27 points to 3407.99, a rise of .79%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 was up .50% and Nasdaq rose just .05%. AstraZeneca will stop marketing Iressa, its cancer drug, selling it only to patients who have benefitted from it, Genentech will buy an unused manufacturing plant from Biogen Idec, Merck can continue testing its new COX-2 drug, NitroMed won FDA approval of its controversial BiDil cardiovascular drug for African-Americans, Novo Nordisk said its long-acting insulin analogue was approved by the FDA, GlycoGenesys rose mysteriously, and Millenium climbed for many different reasons, depending on whom you talked to. More details...
