BioHealth Business Daily (ABIO, GENZ, SOMX, CRXX, VVUS, INO)

Today was a crazy day for the markets, and as you’d expect there were many movers in the drug and biotech sectors.  Today’s edition of the BioHealth Business Daily covers ARCA biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: ABIO), Genzyme Corporation (NASDAQ: GENZ), Somaxon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOMX), CombinatoRx, Incorporated (NASDAQ: CRXX), Vivus Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS), and Inovio Biomedical Corporation (AMEX: INO).

We have provided the news, a relative analysis on price and volume compared to normal, and added in other color where appropriate.

ARCA biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: ABIO) was today’s big winner by a mile, or maybe a 1,000 miles.  This rose exponentially on the USPTO issuing a patent on methods of treating heart failure patients with bucindolol based on genetic testing.  This was up a whopping 210% at $8.22 today.  We also saw some 49 million shares trade.  The average volume before today was less than 25,000 shares per day, and even after the jump this has a market cap of only $62.6 million.  Can you say secondary offering coming? Full details are here Or you can see the quest for ten-baggers at BioHealtInvestor.com.

Genzyme Corporation (NASDAQ: GENZ) reversed yesterday’s downgrade with an opposite competing call.  Leerink Swann said enough was enough in selling and it Raised the rating to Outperform based on recent share weakness.  Genzyme closed up 3.6% at $53.00 on over 7.8 million shares. There is one issue worth discussing, CEO Henri Termeer could face the firing squad if things do not improve here.

Somaxon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOMX) came in even higher than we expected for a share count on its secondary offering. It raised $49.5 million via a 6 million share offering.  The original target was 4 million shares by the company, but we expected 4.5 to 5 million shares would be sold.  This deal was priced at $8.25, but the low of the day was $8.93 and the closing price was down only 4.4% at $9.09 on some 14.9 million shares.

CombinatoRx, Incorporated (NASDAQ: CRXX) spent another day giving back the rest of yesterday’s gains.  This was just continued selling, and shares closed down 8.1% at $1.25 on 4 million shares.

Vivus Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS) announced that the FDA Advisory Committee on July 15 will review its Qnexa for the treatment of obesity.  This is big news in that it set the date, but the shares saw no surprise from the release.  Shares even closed down 0.2% at $9.34 as some might have hoped for a sooner review.  We did see an intra-day high of $9.74 and the trading volume was actually just a normal day with over 2.6 million shares trading hands.

Inovio Biomedical Corporation (AMEX: INO) is into DNA vaccines focused on cancers and infectious diseases, and it was started with a “Buy” rating at Roth Capital.  Shares closed up 9.76% at $1.35 on over 1.2 million shares (about 3X volume).

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JON C. OGG