What's Making News At VYGR, NVCN, OCX, OrganiGram?

(RTTNews) - Allakos Inc. (ALLK) has announced positive phase II results from two additional chronic urticaria cohorts - patients with cholinergic urticaria and symptomatic dermographism.

In the Cholinergic Urticaria Cohort, 9 of 11 patients achieved a response, and in the Symptomatic dermographism cohort, 7 of 10 patients achieved a response.

Earlier this month, Allakos reported that 12 of 13 patients (92%) in the Xolair-naïve chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) cohort achieved a complete response with AK002. Top-line results for the remaining urticaria cohort, patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria who failed to respond to Xolair, are expected later in the first quarter of 2019.

ALLK closed Monday's trading at $42.85, down 4.37%.

Neurocrine Biosciences Inc. (NBIX) and Voyager Therapeutics Inc. (VYGR) have formed a strategic development and commercialization collaboration for Parkinson's disease and Friedreich's Ataxia.

Under the agreement, Neurocrine Biosciences gains development and commercialization rights to Voyager's gene therapy programs VY-AADC for Parkinson's disease, VY-FXN01 for Friedreich's ataxia and two additional programs to be determined.

Neurocrine Biosciences has agreed to pay Voyager $165 million in cash including a $115 million upfront payment and a $50 million equity investment at a Voyager per share price of $11.96. Voyager will also receive funding from Neurocrine Biosciences for all costs incurred on these collaboration programs. Voyager may be entitled to earn up to $1.7 billion in development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments across the four programs.

VYGR closed Monday's trading at $8.04, down 4.85%. In pre-market trading on Tuesday, the stock is up 36.94% to $11.01.

Neovasc Inc. (NVCN)(NVCN.TO) has been given the go-ahead to proceed with phase II of the TIARA-II study for its Tiara transcatheter mitral valve replacement device in Germany and the United Kingdom.

Tiara is specifically designed to treat mitral valve regurgitation (MR) by replacing the diseased valve.

The Tiara valve is currently being evaluated in 2 ongoing clinical trials - TIARA-I, an early feasibility trial in the United States, Canada, and Belgium, and TIARA-II, a European Conformité Européenne Mark Trial in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

NVCN closed Monday's trading at $0.67, down 1.71%. In pre-market trading on Tuesday, the stock is up 23.86% to $0.84.

OncoCyte Corp. (OCX) has announced positive results from its key R&D Validation study demonstrating the accuracy of its DetermaVu liquid biopsy test for lung cancer.

The results show 90% sensitivity and 75% specificity of DetermaVu, demonstrating best-in-class lung cancer liquid biopsy diagnostic test, noted the Company.

DetermaVu Lung is on track for commercial availability in the second half of 2019.

DetermaVu has the potential to dramatically reduce U.S. healthcare costs by billions of dollars each year by eliminating unnecessary biopsies, which, according to a recent Medicare study, cost on average $14,634 each. In addition, DetermaVu can provide great benefit to patients by avoiding invasive biopsies and the complications that arise in up to 24% of those procedures, and deaths that occur in up to 1% of cases, added the Company.

OCX closed Monday's trading at $1.82, down 5.21%. In pre-market trading on Tuesday, the stock is up 74.19% to $3.24.

OrganiGram Holdings Inc. (OGI.V), a licensed producer of cannabis, has signed a multi-year extraction contract with Valens GroWorks Corp.

Under the terms of the agreement, Valens will extract cannabis flowers and trim from Organigram's Moncton operation as well as hemp to produce extract concentrate. In turn, the concentrate will be used by Organigram to produce oils and, eventually, derivative edible and vaporizable cannabis products.

The stock gained more than 19% yesterday, following stellar financial results for the three months ended November 30, 2018.

OGI.V closed Monday's trading at $7.09, up 19.16%.