NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 16, 2017 / Inotek shares saw red on Friday but it was an encouraging day last Thursday when the company announced the preliminary proxy statement for its proposed merger with a leading gene therapy company, Rocket Pharmaceuticals. Shares of Aurinia soared higher after the company was honored with this year's National Corporate Visionary Award from the Lupus Foundation of America.

RDI Initiates Coverage on:

Inotek Pharmaceuticals Corporation
https://rdinvesting.com/news/?ticker=ITEK

Aurinia Pharmaceuticals Inc.
https://rdinvesting.com/news/?ticker=AUPH

Inotek Pharmaceuticals Corporation shares closed down 7.12% on Friday with around 15.2 million shares traded. The company announced last week the Preliminary Proxy Statement for the proposed merger of Inotek with Rocket Pharmaceuticals, a gene therapy company that is the only gene therapy company to use a multi-platform approach to leverage the llentiviral vector (LVV) and adeno-associated viral vector (AAV) gene delivery methods, enabling a broad range of first-in-class indications to be carefully selected and pursued. Inotek's CEO David P. Southwell commented, "We believe the proposed merger with Rocket provides an attractive opportunity for our shareholders. Rocket has several near-term clinical and proof of concept catalysts, a well-funded operation and a management team with rare disease and gene therapy leadership expertise." CEO of Rocket, Gaurav Shah, M.D., commented, "We have built our pipeline applying stringent criteria. We invest in validated assets with strong mechanistic rationale and established preclinical proof of concept. We focus on rare, untreated diseases where there is a high unmet need, with clear clinical endpoints, and a well-defined regulatory pathway. With the funding provided by the proposed merger with Inotek, we believe we are well-positioned to achieve early clinical success and maintain first-mover advantage in each of our exciting programs."

Access RDI's Inotek Pharmaceuticals Corporation Research Report at:
https://rdinvesting.com/news/?ticker=ITEK

Aurinia Pharmaceuticals Inc. shares closed up 7.75% on Friday with a little over 7 million shares traded. It was a solid day in the green for the stock after the company announced last Thursday that it has received the 2017 National Corporate Visionary Award from the Lupus Foundation of America. Dr. Michelle Glickman commented, "We are humbled and thrilled to accept this award. The Foundation's work is crucial to advancing treatments for this disease, and I am proud of the progress Aurinia is making to contribute to the understanding and treatment of the disease. Our drive to succeed is fueled by patients and their families, who continue to inspire us as we work to make innovative therapies available as quickly and efficiently as possible." Aurinia is currently developing voclosporin, an investigational drug, for the treatment of Lupus nephritis, a type of kidney disease caused by systemic lupus erythematosus.

Access RDI's Aurinia Pharmaceuticals Inc. Research Report at:
https://rdinvesting.com/news/?ticker=AUPH

Our Actionable Research on Inotek Pharmaceuticals Corporation (NASDAQ: ITEK) and Aurinia Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: AUPH) can be downloaded free of charge at Research Driven Investing.

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SOURCE: RDInvesting.com