Once again, a single tweet on drug pricing resulted in weakness in the biotech sector with ARIAD (ARIA – Analyst Report) losing ground on a tweet regarding the company’s price hikes for cancer drug, Iclusig. Meanwhile, Regeneron (REGN –Analyst Report) suffered a pipeline setback with the FDA putting a clinical hold on one of its studies.

Recap of the Week’s Most Important Stories

ARIAD Shares Fall on Sanders Tweet: Shares of ARIAD declined 14.8% after Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted on the company’s price hike of leukemia drug Iclusig. The tweet “Drug corporations’ greed is unbelievable. Ariad has raised the price of a leukemia drug to almost $199,000 a year” was in response to an article according to which ARIAD had raised the price of Iclusig the fourth time this year with the treatment now costing $16,561 per month, or almost $199,000 per year, excluding discounts or rebates. Drug pricing issues are not something new but with the Presidential election round the corner, concerns regarding the implementation of new drug pricing policies are picking up.

Regeneron-Teva Study on Clinical Hold: Regeneron and partner Teva were hit by a clinical hold on their experimental pain treatment, fasinumab. The FDA placed a phase IIb study in patients with chronic low back pain on clinical hold and asked for the study protocol to be amended following the discovery of adjudicated arthropathy in a patient receiving high dose fasinumab – the patient had advanced osteoarthritis at study entry.

Fasinumab is an investigational nerve growth factor (NGF) antibody. Dosing in the study has been stopped and Teva and Regeneron are now planning a pivotal phase III study for chronic low back pain excluding patients with advanced osteoarthritis.

Meanwhile, the companies plan to study only lower doses in the phase III osteoarthritis pain program as the incidence of adjudicated arthropathies was found to be potentially dose-dependent, with a higher rate in the higher dose groups. Shares of both Regeneron and Teva were down on the fasinumab update. Regeneron is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. 

Ocular Gains on Regeneron Collaboration: Ocular Therapeutix’s (OCUL – Snapshot Report) shares jumped on the company’s collaboration agreement with Regeneron for the development of a sustained release formulation of the latter’s blockbuster eye drug, Eylea (aflibercept) for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) and other serious retinal diseases. In addition to receiving milestone payments, Ocular will be entitled to royalties on potential future sales.