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Biotech / Medical : Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Miljenko Zuanic who wrote (601)	12/3/2002 7:25:15 PM
From: tuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1169

Is this old news? >>BOSTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Tuesday charged a lawyer for Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NasdaqNM:VRTX - News) with insider trading after he allegedly sold shares ahead of the company's announcement last year that it would suspend clinical trials on an arthritis drug. In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Andrew S. Marks of selling nearly 21,000 company shares on Sept. 21, 2001, three days before the biotech firm released the negative news. Shares of Vertex fell 24 percent after it suspended development of the drug called VX-745. The SEC announced the action in a press statement. At the time, Marks was an attorney for the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, and for a brief period, he approved trades and was in the loop on draft press releases, said Lynne Brum, a Vertex spokeswoman. Vertex hired a general counsel in October 2001, she added. Brum said that Vertex's board disciplined Marks over the matter, but added that the nature of the discipline remained confidential. Marks currently serves as the company's patent counsel, she said. Vertex has cooperated with the SEC in its investigation, Brum said. The SEC alleged in the complaint that Marks liquidated all of his Vertex stock at an average price of $22.81 per share, receiving about $477,000. The SEC is seeking to recover those proceeds from him and bar Marks from acting as an officer or director of any publicly-traded company. A day before the stock sale, Marks allegedly wrote an e-mail to Vertex's chief executive officer expressing concern that another employee wanted to sell shares before the announcement, the SEC said. "I guess that I am troubled about any employee trading prior to that release because it is likely to have an effect on the stock and...could create the perception of insider trading," Marks allegedly wrote, the SEC stated. Three days after the stock trade, Vertex announced its decision to suspend development of the drug after non-clinical trials revealed negative effects on animals' central nervous systems.<< And there's also older but heretofore unposted news: >>GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov 21 (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline Plc said on Thursday it planned to file a new concentrated HIV/AIDS drug for marketing approval by the end of this year, after a key clinical trial produced positive results. Thomas Stark, from the development team of GSK, Europe's biggest drugmaker, told Reuters that the company hoped to launch the drug in the United States in the second half of 2003 and in Europe in the first half of 2004. Data showing the second-generation protease inhibitor, known as 908, to be both potent and well-tolerated was presented at the Sixth International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection in Glasgow. The drug, being developed with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc (NasdaqNM:VRTX - News), is designed to be given with Abbott Laboratories Inc's (NYSE:ABT - News) Norvir, or ritonavir, and offers the added benefit of once-daily dosing, so that patients only have to take four pills a day. Results of the key Phase III trial showed 68 percent of 660 previously untreated patients with advanced HIV infection had undetectable levels of virus in their blood after 48 weeks of treatment, compared with 65 percent of those given Pfizer Inc's (NYSE:PFE - News) Viracept. "These results demonstrate the potency, durability and tolerability of 908/ritonavir once-daily in therapy-naive subjects, with the added benefit of a low pill burden," said study investigator Joseph Gathe. "Currently approved protease inhibitors require at least six pills a day." Protease inhibitors revolutionised treatment when they were first introduced in 1996 as part of triple-drug cocktails that effectively turned HIV/AIDS into a manageable condition -- rather than a death sentence -- for thousands of patients. But the drugs are difficult to use and can cause serious side effects, making the development of improved versions a priority for researchers. GSK has rights to 908 in the United States, Europe and some Asian countries, while Vertex has options to commercialise the drug in Japan and to co-promote it in the United States and Europe.<< Cheers, Tuck