Gene Therapy Stocks Get Boost After Another Firm Is Bought

(Bloomberg) -- A trio of choice small-cap gene therapy companies were off to the races on Monday, adding to last week’s gains, after yet another peer got snapped up, this time by Biogen.

Shares of Adverum Biotechnologies Inc. and Voyager Therapeutics Inc. rallied 13-16 percent while Regenxbio Inc. rose 8 percent after Biogen Inc. said it would buy Nightstar Therapeutics Plc for more than $800 million. That followed Roche Holding AG’s $4.8 billion bid last week for Spark Therapeutics Inc.

Audentes Therapeutics Inc. briefly rose as much as 4.3 percent, adding to a 30 percent gain last week, and UniQure climbed 5.8 percent after touching an intraday record. Chardan analyst Gbola Amusa had highlighted Nightstar, Audentes, UniQure and Regenxbio as all “unpartnered” gene therapy companies that had already produced “quality” proof of concept results that could spark more business development interest from large cap drugmakers.

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