royalty payments

Nymox Pharma (Nasdaq: NYMX) 13% HIGHER; Recordati, Nymox report European licensing pact for NX-1207. Recordati will make an upfront payment of about $13 million.

Nymox will also receive milestone and royalty payments: a minimum of 26% to increase progressively up to 40% of net sales in the case of contractual conditions achieved.

Smart Modular Tech (Nasdaq: SMOD) 10.1% LOWER; reports Q1 adj-EPS of $0.27, 2 cents better than the analyst estimate of $0.25.

See SCO keep going. Stop SCO Stop. Seriously Stop SCO Stop.

Metabasis Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MBRX) 26.4% HIGHER; announced that its four year research collaboration with Merck & Co., Inc.

(NYSE: MRK), focused on the discovery and development of AMP protein kinase activators, has yielded a lead candidate that Merck has selected to advance into late preclinical development.

In addition, under an amended agreement, Merck has agreed to pay Metabasis a one-time fee of $6 million that satisfies all future obligations for milestones and royalty payments.

XOMA Ltd. (Nasdaq: XOMA) 35.3% HIGHER; following yesterday's late day spike on news that XOMA's bacterial cell expression technology licensee UCB S.A. has received FDA approval to market CIMZIA(r) (certolizumab pegol).

XOMA will receive royalty payments on sales of CIMZIA for this indication and will continue to receive royalties on sales of CIMZIA for the treatment of moderate to severe Crohn's disease, for which it was approved in April 2008.

Momentum is continuing today as news hit that Zymeworks has entered into a research agreement with XOMA Ltd.