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Teva/Intel Tie up for Huntington's Disease Technology Platform

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Generic drug maker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited (TEVA - Free Report) announced that it is collaborating with Intel Corporation (INTC - Free Report) to develop a wearable device and machine learning platform that can be used for the treatment of Huntington’s disease (HD).

To improve understanding of disease progression and enhance treatment evaluation, the platform will monitor and analyze the key symptoms that impact the daily lives of patients with HD.

Teva will deploy the technology in a sub-study in the ongoing phase II Open-Pride HD study on pridopidine by the end of 2016. Patients will be asked to use smartphones and wear smartwatches equipped with sensing technology that measures their functioning and movement. Data will be wirelessly streamed to a cloud-based platform developed by Intel for analysis.

HD, a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disorder, affects about five to seven individuals in 100,000 in the western countries. Patients generally succumb to the disease within 15–25 years of diagnosis.

In a separate press release, Teva announced that it has launched an authorized generic of Cubicin (daptomycin; 500 mg) in the U.S.

Cubicin (injection) is indicated for the treatment of Staphylococcus aureusbloodstream infections (bacteremia) in adults, including those with right-sided infective endocarditis caused by methicillin-susceptible and methicillin-resistant isolates.

We believe that the launch of Cubicin in the U.S. will boost the performance of Teva’s generics business. Teva’s U.S. generics business generated revenues of $4.5 billion in the first six months of 2016.

As per IMS data, Cubicin injection recorded annual sales of approximately $1.2 billion in the U.S. as of Jul 2016.

Teva currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A couple of better-ranked stocks in the health care sector are Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (ANIK - Free Report) and ANI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ANIP - Free Report) . Both the stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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