NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / January 12, 2017 / Biotech and Healthcare stocks were slammed Wednesday as President Donald Trump made some critical remarks against the industries at his first news conference since the election. The 5 largest losers in the S&P 500 Index were all pharmaceutical or biotech companies in early trading Wednesday. The iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index ETF fell by as much as 4 percent before settling to close down 2.98 percent for the day. The S&P 500 Health Care Sector dropped 1.04 percent.

"Our drug industry has been disastrous," Mr. Trump said in his opening remarks. "They're getting away with murder."

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President Trump's election was initially perceived to be a win for the drug companies as Hillary Clinton had been very critical of drug manufacturers throughout her campaign and vowed to fight the "price gouging" that was happening within the industry. But recent comments made by President Trump have wiped out all the initial gains for drug stocks and have raised some major concerns.

"Pharma has a lot of lobbies, a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power. And there's very little bidding on drugs. We're the largest buyer of drugs in the world, and yet we don't bid properly," Mr. Trump said. "We're going to start bidding and were going to save billions of dollars over a period of time."

ImmunoCellular Therapeutics Ltd. (NYSE MKT: IMUC)

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ImmunoCellular Therapeutics' shares dropped 33.81 percent to close at $2.78 a share Wednesday. The stock traded between $2.68 and $3.89 on volume of 781,169 shares traded. The company is developing immune-based therapies for the treatment of brain and other cancers. ImmunoCellular's lead product candidate, ICT-107, is a dendritic cell-based immunotherapy targeting multiple tumor-associated antigens on glioblastoma stem cells. ICT-107 is currently being tested in a phase 3 registration trial in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma. As of September 30, 2016, ImmunoCellular had $15.3 million in cash.

Neuralstem, Inc. (NASDAQ: CUR)

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Neuralstem's shares fell 23.27 percent to close at $4.65 a share Wednesday. The stock traded between $4.50 and $6.19 on volume of 1.93 million shares traded. The company's patented technology enables the commercial-scale production of multiple types of central nervous system stem cells, which are being developed as potential therapies for multiple central nervous system diseases and conditions. ON January 6th, Neuralstem announced a reverse stock split of its shares of common stock at a ratio of 1-for-13, to regain compliance with the $1.00 minimum bid price condition and thereby fulfill all of the NASDAQ Capital Market continued listing requirements.

"The reverse split along with the recent $20 million strategic investment has increased our shareholder equity, strengthened our capital structure, and allows us to satisfy all the Nasdaq listing requirements," commented Rich Daly, Chairman and CEO, Neuralstem. "Over the last year we have continued to execute on the new operational and clinical strategy to help increase shareholder confidence and interest in Neuralstem. We look forward to focusing on providing our Phase 2 MDD clinical trial results this year."

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