March 29, 2006 – Novartis will pay Idenix up to $525 million to exercise its option on valopicitabine, a hepatitis C drug; Nanogen won FDA clearance to market StatusFirst, a plasma test for congestive heart failure; Ranbaxy Labs paid $324 million to acquire fellow generic company Terapia of Romania; Senesco Technologies used small interfering RNA to successfully reduce HIV levels; CuraGen will begin a Phase I test of a new cancer therapy; Vertex Pharma signed a deal to use the CellCarta proteomics platform to discover biomarkers; OXiGENE received a patent for the synthesizing technique used to create Combretastatin CA4P; and XenoPort said it would release additional data from a Phase IIb trial of a drug targeting restless leg syndrome. The Centient Biotech 200™ was 25 points higher at 3964.05, a gain of .63%. More details...
