Biggest Health Care Winners Become Biggest Losers After Friday's Market Action

Shares of Palomar Medical Technologies (PMTI) - which develops light-based systems for cosmetic treatments - soared Friday after the company received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to market an eye wrinkle-removal laser device for home use. The approval means the device - developed with Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) Consumer Companies Inc. unit - can be marketed and sold directly to consumers without a prescription.

Meanwhile Thursday's top two biggest gainers became Friday's top two biggest losers. Shares of Novavax, Inc. (NVAX) gave back some of its 74% gains. On Thursday the company's share price soared after an announced deal and evaluation of a virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine candidate against the novel influenza A (H1N1) virus.

Meanwhile, Hemispherx Biopharma's (HEB) shares started the day on Friday as one of the top gainers, yet it ended up as the sector's biggest loser without any solid piece of bad news. Instead share prices were affected adversely after the company was hit twice the same day with negative opinion pieces from Street.com's biotech columnist Adam Feuerstein. The powerful Wall Street portal alleges, among other things, that the company's claims that approval is pending for its chronic fatigue syndrome drug are based on an 8-year-old government report and that CEO, Dr. William Carter is desperately trying to pump up its stock price before the FDA rejects Ampligen.

Missed by most HEB investors were two positive developments. First, Reuters reported that Japan plans to produce enough H1N1 flu vaccine to treat 20 million people by the end of year. The company has been in discussions and testing with that country for some time. “The highest level of the Japanese government and public medical community is now focused exclusively on our product,” Carter told BioMedReports last week. “They stopped working on all other adjuvants (boosters) and are only working with this one because they’ve found that it enhances the vaccines by 100 fold.”

Then Prohost Biotechnology, an independent publication which evaluates biotechnology companies, their products, technologies, scientists and managers, as well as their finances for fund managers, investors, medical professionals issued a report on Friday calling both Hemispherx's Ampligen and Antigenics’ (AGEN) QS-21 Stimulon the two most indispensable vaccine adjuvants. "We need adjuvants and Ampligen is among those whom we really need to have available to infectious disease and oncology specialists" said the report.

Peer-reviewed medical publications, have reported key findings with a view to offering a rationale for the use of Ampligen as a potentially safe adjuvant - one recently published paper from Cardiff Univeristy even surmises that the drug is capable of overcoming tumour-related immune tolerance mechanisms in a clinical setting.

Top Movers In Healthchare Friday 06/06/09

Gainers (% price change)	Last Trade	Change	Mkt Cap
Palomar Medical Tech	PMTI	16.73	+5.77 (52.65%)	301.83M
Cutera, Inc.	CUTR	8.90	+1.08 (13.81%)	118.27M
NxStage Medical, Inc.	NXTM	4.50	+0.48 (11.94%)	209.48M
Incyte Corporation	INCY	3.84	+0.36 (10.34%)	373.79M
BioDelivery Sciences Intl	BDSI	6.65	+0.59 (9.74%)	127.90M
Losers (% price change)
Hemispherx BioPharma, Inc	HEB	2.73	-1.02 (-27.20%)	232.40M
Novavax, Inc.	NVAX	2.60	-0.66 (-20.25%)	224.95M
Antigenics, Inc.	AGEN	2.23	-0.44 (-16.48%)	162.37M
Human Genome Sciences	HGSI	2.82	-0.33 (-10.48%)	382.93M
DURECT Corporation	DRRX	2.57	-0.25 (-8.87%)	211.18M
Most Actives (dollar volume)
Pfizer Inc.	PFE	14.48	-0.16 (-1.09%)	97.71B
Merck & Co., Inc.	MRK	26.17	-0.41 (-1.54%)	55.18B
Johnson & Johnson	JNJ	55.59	-0.25 (-0.45%)	153.18B
Covidien Ltd.	COV	36.01	+0.36 (1.02%)	18.15B
Schering-Plough Corp.	SGP	23.80	-0.36 (-1.49%)	38.75B

Comments

[jimmy Turano:]

MR.GARZA,
Please give your perspective on 'MRNA'
As I predicted when the stock was $10.21, ON THE MOTELY FOOL CAPS SITE, and the fact that the stock then hit $.14 cents,
two years later, speaks louder than words.
HOWS THAT FOR FORECASTING, MR.GARZA?
So this year 'MRNA' rallied to $1.99 on news of two partnerships, nd pure hype, creating an overbought, overpriced stock, that has now retreated to $1.42. I still believe
it is overpriced at this level and the trend is now bearish.
The only sad part for me, was that everyone at the SEC overlooked the fact that during all of 2007, the insiders were selling the most shares ever. And as we all know today, at the end of 2007, P&G broke up their partnership with then NSTK.
Does anyone believe that that was purely a coincidence by insiders? The SEC is to be shareholders advocates, but with all the corruption that unfolded since September 08 to present, it appears that the SEC
looked the other way.
CARE TO STEP UP TO THE PLATE MR.GARZA AND BE HEARD?

Jun 07 12:21 PM