Mallinck­rodt bags an­oth­er mi­cro­cap biotech, pick­ing up Ocera’s failed drug in $117M buy­out

Back at the be­gin­ning of the year, Ocera looked like just about any oth­er small de­vel­op­er af­ter a head-on col­li­sion with bad da­ta. Its Phase IIb in he­pat­ic en­cephalopa­thy — trig­gered by chron­ic liv­er dis­ease — flopped on the pri­ma­ry, crush­ing its stock price and leav­ing an­a­lysts shak­ing their heads over the wreck­age.

But CEO Lin­da Grais game­ly tout­ed ev­i­dence of ef­fi­ca­cy at the high dose, and that ul­ti­mate­ly gained the at­ten­tion of Mallinck­rodt $MNK, which has picked it up cheap af­ter go­ing biotech shop­ping in the bar­gain aisle. And now they’re shoot­ing for an OK on the IV for­mu­la­tion in 5 years, look­ing for a new way to low­er lev­els of am­mo­nia in the blood.

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