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Biotech / Medical : Elan Corporation, plc (ELN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: All Mtn Ski who wrote (822)	1/7/2000 8:25:00 PM
From: Gary M. Reed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10345

Isis Signs Up Drugmaker Elan to Help Develop Hepatitis C Drug 1/6/00 5:23:00 PM Source: Bloomberg News Carlsbad, California, Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc., a money-losing biotechnology company, said Elan Corp., Ireland's No. 1 drugmaker, agreed to help it develop a hepatitis C drug soon to enter clinical trials. Elan will buy $7.5 million in Isis shares by March 31 and may buy another $7.5 million, giving it as much as a 6 percent stake in Isis. Elan also will loan Isis up to $12 million to help pay for the experimental drug's development costs. Shares in Carlsbad, California-based Isis rose in after- hours trading on the announcement. It was the first positive news that Isis has released since Dec. 15, when its stock fell 64 percent following the failure of a drug for the digestive disorder Crohn's disease that had completed the final stage of human testing. ''This is an important reminder that this is a company with a very deep product pipeline, which has been ignored since the failure,'' said Jim McCamant, an Isis shareholder and editor of the Medical Technology Stock Letter. Isis shares fell 1/8 to 6 13/16 in Nasdaq trading. They rose as high as 9 following the announcement, which was released after the close of U.S. stock exchanges. The stock traded at a 52-week high of 17 3/8 on Nov. 29. Isis plans to develop the hepatitis C drug, dubbed ISIS 14803, through a subsidiary, which will investigate whether the treatment can be delivered through Elan's Medipad disposable skin patch. Both companies will license technology to the subsidiary. Isis develops drugs based on antisense technology, an approach that aims to disable the genetic instructions for a disease. Antisense drugs are designed to reverse the bits of DNA code involved in a particular disease, like a mirror image. When the sections of reverse code and DNA meet, they bind and neutralize the DNA's harmful activity. Isis last year won FDA approval for an injected antisense drug called Vitravene, which fights a relatively rare AIDS- related eye disease. The approval was considered a triumph for the field of antisense, which has been met with skepticism and encountered repeated setbacks. Isis last month called off plans to seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of its Crohn's disease antisense drug and said it planned to cut its expenses in half, saving $30 million to $35 million over the next year.