By Mary de Wet
Gemini Therapeutics shares were up 18% astatine $1.83 successful premarket trading Tuesday aft its merger target, Disc Medicine Inc., received orphan cause designation for bitopertin.
The banal is down astir 47% for the year.
Gemini Therapeutics said successful August that it agreed to merge with the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical institution successful a banal swap that would effect successful Disc shareholders owning much than 70% of the combined company.
On Tuesday, Disc said the Food and Drug Administration had fixed the designation to bitopertin to dainty erythropoietic protoporphyria, a uncommon illness that causes terrible reactions erstwhile patients are exposed to sunlight.
The FDA's orphan-drug programme gives peculiar presumption to drugs and biologics for diseases and disorders that impact less than 200,000 radical successful the U.S., and provides for an extended selling exclusivity play against competition.
Write to Mary de Wet astatine mary.dewet@dowjones.com
English (US)