After a period of struggling financial figures, Arena Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ: ARNA) saw a quick rally in the market today. At current readings, the stock was selling at $1.93, which is a good 9.04% rally from the previous close of $1.26. The stock has been showing lackluster movements over the last week; however, today it traded at a volume of 9.29 million where its average volume is a much lower 7.27 million.
It will be remembered that ARNA lost a major move in its drug pipeline when its anti-obesity drug Lorcaserin was rejected by the FDA on rat-cancer-in-clinical-trial issues. This caused it to face legal action in the form of a lawsuit claiming it had intentionally duped investors by hiding damaging clinical trial results from them. ARNA CEO Jack Lief’s defended of the company’s activity by insisting the information wasn’t material to the company or its shareholders. All this negative news resulted in the company losing more than 80% of its value since October.
The stock had a brief rally around December 20 last year when it broke through the critical $2 barrier for a short period on bullish news that the Lorcaserin drug may, after all, be re-filed for approval, and approved by the FDA, much earlier than expected. However, that rally did not last long, and over the New Year, the stock fell back to its below $2 position. Today is the first time after that last anti-climax that ARNA is showing some spike in its graph.
There is no specific news that triggered today’s spike. However, ARNA’s resilient insistence that it is on a “path forward” for FDA approval of its Lorcaserin drug and its other drugs in the pipeline like the oral drug candidates APD791, APD916 and APD811, may have created some speculative interest in investors. APD791, especially, is important because it has completed pivotal Phase Ia and Ib clinical trials and is a “selective inverse agonist of the serotonin IIA receptor intended for the treatment of arterial thrombosis and other related conditions.”
No comments:
Post a Comment