Ver­tex shares surge as its cys­tic fi­bro­sis com­bo proves mar­gin­al­ly pos­i­tive, but pay­ers may not be so im­pressed

Ver­tex came up with the pos­i­tive da­ta that an­a­lysts were look­ing for in piv­otal stud­ies of a com­bi­na­tion drug for cys­tic fi­bro­sis, tee­ing up new drug ap­pli­ca­tions in the US and Eu­rope lat­er this year. The stock $VRTX re­spond­ed in kind, shoot­ing up a whop­ping 17% in af­ter-mar­ket trad­ing, even though there’s lit­tle sign that the da­ta on dis­play will thaw some frigid re­la­tion­ships with a large seg­ment of pay­ers who clear­ly are re­luc­tant to cov­er these drugs.

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