Shares of Opko Health Inc. (NYSE:OPK) ended Thursday session in red amid volatile trading. The shares closed down -0.39 points or -3.88% at $9.55 with 4.80 million shares getting traded. Post opening the session at $10.00, the shares hit an intraday low of $9.33 and an intraday high of $10.03 and the price vacillated in this range throughout the day. The company has a market cap of $5.00 billion and the numbers of outstanding shares have been calculated to be 547.44 million shares.
Opko Health Inc. (OPK) on May 11, 2016 announced the appointment of Douglass Laidlaw, PhD as Vice President of Medical Affairs to support the anticipated launch of RAYALDEE®.
Dr. Laidlaw has over 15 years of experience in leading strategic planning, development and execution of medical education initiatives for numerous pharmaceutical companies, including Relypsa, Keryx, Sanofi, Genzyme, Neurocine Biosciences, Serono and Organon. He has been involved in new product launches targeting patients with chronic kidney disease and has deep connections with key nephrology opinion leaders. Prior to joining OPKO, Dr. Laidlaw served as Relypsa’s Executive Director, Medical Affairs, and Sanofi’s National Director, Medical Science Liaisons, Medical Affairs.
“Doug is a key addition to the management team in OPKO’s Renal Division,” said Phillip Frost, M.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of OPKO. “A well-conceived and executed medical education strategy is critical to Rayaldee’s acceptance by U.S. healthcare professionals.”
Shares of Ibio Inc (NYSEMKT:IBIO) ended Thursday session in red amid volatile trading. The shares closed down -0.020 points or -2.86% at $0.680 with 80,371.00 shares getting traded. Post opening the session at $0.70, the shares hit an intraday low of $0.67 and an intraday high of $0.70 and the price vacillated in this range throughout the day. The company has a market cap of $56.17 million and the numbers of outstanding shares have been calculated to be 82.61 million shares.
Ibio Inc (IBIO) on Jan 14, 2016 announced the formation of a joint venture with affiliates of Eastern Capital Limited (the “Eastern Affiliates”) to develop and manufacture plant-made pharmaceuticals.
Eastern and iBio have capitalized a newly-formed subsidiary of iBio — iBio CMO LLC — to create a contract manufacturing organization for development, scale-up and large-scale manufacturing of biologicals. The Eastern Affiliates contributed $15 million in cash to the venture for 30% of the equity. iBio contributed research and manufacturing licenses of iBio’s proprietary intellectual property for plant-made production of biopharmaceuticals. iBio will retain a 70% equity interest.
iBio CMO LLC entered into a 35 year operating lease with the Eastern Affiliates, to control a 139,000 square foot Class A life sciences building located on approximately 21 acres in Bryan, Texas. The facility, previously owned by Caliber Biotherapeutics LLC and its affiliates, and now owned by the Eastern Affiliates, is located on a technology corridor abutting the campus of Texas A & M University, home of the National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing, a leading center for research in the production of vaccines and protein therapeutics.
Coincident with formation of the joint venture, Eastern agreed to purchase 10.0 million additional shares of iBio common stock at $0.622 per share, a 30% premium to the closing price on January 12, through a private placement in two tranches. The first tranche of 3.5 million shares will be purchased promptly after NYSE approval of a listing application therefor. Concurrent with the closing of the 3.5 million share purchase, Eastern will exercise 1.784 million $0.53 warrants it owns for iBio shares of common stock representing 100% of the warrants Eastern held from prior iBio financings. The second tranche of 6.5 million shares will be purchased, subject to shareholders’ approval at a meeting of shareholders expected to be convened in February 2016 and NYSE approval of a listing application therefor. Upon closing of the second tranche, a standstill agreement would become effective to limit additional acquisitions by Eastern of iBio common shares to a maximum of 38% of outstanding shares, absent approval by a majority of iBio’s Board of Directors.
“We expect these transactions to be transformative for iBio,” said iBio Chairman, Robert B. Kay. “They give us control over a beautifully engineered, fully-equipped, large-scale facility to implement iBio’s proprietary plant-made biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing technologies. They also provide substantial capital to both iBio and iBio CMO to support progress of iBio’s fibrosis products into human clinical trials, and enable us to offer the rapidly expanding and underserved biologics development market contract manufacturing, using the superior attributes of our proprietary, plant-based technologies”
Shares of ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:ZIOP) closed at $7.59 with 3.40 million shares getting traded. Post opening the session at $7.83, the shares hit an intraday low of $7.45 and an intraday high of $8.12 and the price vacillated in this range throughout the day. The company has a market cap of $1.02 billion and the numbers of outstanding shares have been calculated to be 131.84 million shares.
ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (ZIOP) on May 10, 2016 announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016.
“We have solid momentum in each of our cell and gene therapy programs, with the potential to move our lead gene therapy, Ad-RTS-IL-12 + veledimex, into a pivotal study next year,” said Laurence Cooper, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of ZIOPHARM. “Ad-RTS-IL-12 + veledimex continues to yield encouraging results as we recruit additional patients into an ongoing dose-escalation study in recurrent glioblastoma, and we look forward to presenting this data to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) at its annual meeting in June of this year. Given the dire outcomes in this patient population, a potential therapeutic benefit may be quickly assessed and, if these results remain durable, our goal would be to move into a registration study, following discussions with regulators.”
Dr. Cooper added: “As this promising program moves forward, we continue to test the potential of our cell therapy platform and technologies in collaboration with leading partners in industry and academia. This includes clinical-stage platforms unique to ZIOPHARM, such as the non-viral Sleeping Beauty (SB) system, that are fundamental to making immune cell therapy a cost-effective, widely-available treatment modality. These technologies are particularly important in leveraging T-cell receptors (TCRs) to target neoantigens in solid tumors which requires individualizing this immunotherapy, an approach that is possible with our customizable, easy-to-manufacture non-viral gene transfer system. We expect to initiate or continue prosecuting up to six clinical trials across multiple platforms in 2016 and look forward to sharing data and outcomes from these trials throughout the year.”