Health Care Up After Government Funding Bill Deal -- Health Care Roundup

Shares of health-care companies rose after a dispute over the debt ceiling was resolved in a deal between President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders.

The Senate passed the bill that rolled together emergency relief for Hurricane Harvey victims with a short-term extension of the government's funding and its borrowing limit.

Celgene and Bristol Myers Squibb separately said the Food and Drug Administration has placed several of their clinical trials on hold, the latest signs of trepidation around an emerging field of cancer drugs. All the trials were of "immunotherapy" treatments designed to harness the body's immune system to fight cancer and follow similar holds on trials of a treatment developed by Merck.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals shares fell sharply after it said it has suspended dosing in a clinical trial after a "fatal thrombotic event."

Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the FDA is hurrying to modernize the way it evaluates a flood of new drug applications derived from the fast-growing fields of gene and cell therapy.

Rob Curran, rob.curran@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 07, 2017 16:34 ET (20:34 GMT)