NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Shares of Accelr8 Technology increased 160 percent in the last week of the month of April, making the firm the top gainer among stocks in the GWDN Index.
The dramatic increase came after Accelr8 said that an investment group plans to pump up to $35 million into the company to support further development and commercialization of its BACcel platform. It also said that one member of that investment group, Larry Mehren, most recently head of global business and chief operating officer of Roche Tissue Diagnostics, would become CEO of the firm.
Its stock traded as high as $3.36 the day after the announcement, a level not seen since Sept. 1, 2011. It closed the month at $2.73.
Among the other firms seeing a big increase in their share price were Sequenom, which gained around 26 percent for the month of April, rising after three pieces of news mid-month. It extended a deal to purchase Illumina sequencing equipment and consumables for use in its non-invasive trisomy 21 test, and it raised its estimates for the number of billed MateriT21 Plus tests for 2012 to 40,000 as adoption of the test accelerated during the first quarter. Sequenom also announced healthcare cost management firm MultiPlan intended to provide its members with access to the MaterniT21 Plus test.
Gen-Probe finished the month up 23 percent, with that increase coming on the last day of April after it announced a deal to be acquired by Hologic for $82.75 per share, or $3.7 billion.
Among the firms that saw their share prices decline the most were Rosetta Genomics (-60 percent), CombiMatrix (-36 percent), and Pacific Biosciences (-21 percent).
Rosetta's shares fell sharply after the firm announced on April 12 that that it had signed definitive agreements to sell 8.1 million shares of its stock to certain investors at $.17 apiece. Its shares had closed the previous day at $.36.
Overall, the GWDN Index was down less than 1 percent for the month. In comparison, the Nasdaq was down around 1 percent, the Nasdaq Biotech Index was up around 2 percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was flat.
Ed. note: Pressure BioSciences was removed from the GWDN Index after being delisted from the Nasdaq in early April.
