Dutch gene therapy pioneer raises $82 million in U.S. IPO

An operator installs a chromatography column to purify the gene therapy drug Glybera at Dutch biotech company uniQure in AmsterdamA small Dutch company behind the Western world's first approved gene therapy priced its shares above the expected range in a U.S. stock offering on Wednesday, showing the current investor appetite for biotechnology. Amsterdam-based uniQure said it would sell 5.4 million shares at an initial public offering price of $17.00 each, netting it $81.9 million after expenses. UniQure won approval in November 2012 to sell its drug Glybera in Europe and intends to start selling it as a treatment for the ultra-rare disease lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD) with partner Chiesi in the first half of 2014.

As quality control violations rise, FDA chief heads to India

Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of the U.S. FDA, speaks during the 2013 Reuters Health Summit in New YorkThe commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, plans to visit India for the first time in an official capacity next week as the agency works to keep sub-standard food and drugs from entering the United States. The FDA's Wednesday announcement of the visit, planned for February 10-18, comes less than two weeks after the FDA banned products from a fourth facility owned by Indian drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd due to manufacturing violations, effectively shutting the company out of the U.S. market for the foreseeable future. India is the second-largest exporter of drugs to the United States after Canada and the eighth-largest food exporter. Indian companies supply 40 percent of all drugs consumed in the United States, yet quality control problems have been rampant.

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