Shares of Spark Therapeutics Inc more than doubled in their debut, valuing the gene-therapy company at nearly $1.5 billion and underscoring investor's interest in the field that recently produced a million-dollar drug. The company's shares opened at $45.10 in their debut on Friday, nearly double their IPO price of $23, and soared to a high of $50 with about 6.6 million shares changing hands.Spark Therapeutics' debut comes three months after the Western world's first gene therapy drug received a $1.4 million price tag, a new record for a medicine to treat a rare disease.The sky-high cost of Glybera, from Dutch biotech firm UniQure and its Italian marketing partner Chiesi, shows how single curative therapies to fix faulty genes may upend the conventional pharmaceutical business model.U.S. drug giant Pfizer Inc said last month it is moving into gene therapy, the latest sign that the technology may finally be ready for prime time after a few setbacks.
Pfizer Inc. (Pfizer) is a research-based, global biopharmaceutical company. Shares of PFE fell by 1.3% or $-0.415/share to $31.42. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $27.51 and as high as $33.50. On average, 24861800 shares of PFE exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 24528830.
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