Australian biotech market watch 22/01/10

By Tim Dean
Friday, 22 January, 2010

Health and biotech stocks have followed the All Ordinaries on a slide in morning trading on the back of a weak week in Wall St and concerns over the global economy. The All Ords are down 1.8% in early afternoon trading, with the S&P Health Care index experiencing a slight recovery from this morning, down only 0.25% as of 1pm.

One of the biggest drops was had by Mesoblast (ASX:MSB), which shed 18c to $1.95, although it's still up 44% over the past month.

Sirtex Medical (ASX:SRX) has also dropped 6%, down to $7.07, and Prima BioMed is back to 17c after bumping to 18c at yesterday's close.

pSivida (ASX:PVA) shed 23c, down to $4.05, and Patrys (ASX:PAB) has continued its decline of the past week, down 3.9% to 12.5c.

It wasn't all bad news, though. Cochlear (ASX:COH) managed to put on $1.69, to $66.12, in a strong morning's trading.

Xenotransplantation specialists, Living Cell Technology, has had some ups and downs over the past week, but recovered today to the tune of 2.4%, up to 21c.

CSL (ASX:CSL) was up slightly, adding 8c to $31.15, and ResMed (ASX:RMD) was steady.