While You Were Thawing Your Bird

IVBlog Public Service Announcement courtesy of this blogger's mother: "If you are buying a frozen turkey, make sure you have 4 days to defrost it. It takes almost 4 full days to properly defrost an 18 lb. frozen turkey. I got mine today [Sunday] and put it in the garage. Love, mom."

We're assuming garaging the bird is optional considering it's been pretty cold in a lot of places, and our own bird is in the fridge (and in any case we take no responsibility for mom's accuracy, but her turkey is usually pretty damn good). Of course you could always get a fresh turkey, but in this economy?

On to the weekend's news, and Monday's questions: Has the much-talked-about wave of M&A begun to crest? How much cash will US taxpayers spend on Citigroup? Will she or won't she? Was "Chinese Democracy" worth the wait?

Anyway, while you were installing some Cabinet:

• Israeli business paper Globes is reporting this morning that Johnson & Johnson is acquiring Omrix Biopharmaceuticals for $27/share, or $465 million (a nearly 70% premium to Omrix's pre-rumor-inflated price of last Thursday). J&J's Ethix distributes Omrix's surgical sealant Quixil/Crosseal in Europe and North America and the acquisition has been rumored for some time. No confirmation from either player, so far. 7AM Update: Confirmed
  
• Speaking of birds, good news for falcons of all stripes this weekend (Eagles, of course, fared less well). According to the AP, "Thunder and Lightning carried the Atlanta Falcons to an impressive win Sunday in a game they couldn’t afford to lose in the NFC South," as the Falcons drubbed the Carolina Panthers 45-28. Ooh, stormy. Also on Sunday, Peregrine Pharmaceuticals' anti-phosphatidylserine (anti-PS) antibody bavituximab showed further potential as a broad-spectrum antiviral drug, as a paper published in Nature Medicine described its potency in animal models of cytomegalovirus and Lassa fever virus. In other news '80s drama Falcon Crest is poised to return to your screens and upon further review, the Maltese Falcon was actually REAL. OK, we made those last two up.
  
• NicOx's final Phase III study for its naproxcinod osteoarthritis hopeful hit all three co-primary endpoints; a planned pooling of blood-pressure data from all three studies (the first two in OA of the knee, this third one in OA of the hip) is ongoing with results expected "in the coming weeks." Also expected before the end of the year are results from a second abulatory blood pressure monitoring study--the first reported a few weeks ago.
  
• You thought owing money to your loan shark "Junior" was tough? One of many cash-crunched and market-trampled biotech companies, the antiviral specialist Panacos Pharmaceuticals owed $20mm to Hercules. We're talking Zeus' son here, people. All is repaid now, though. Phew.
  
• Philips is cutting 5% of its health care workforce, or 1600 employees. This move--spurred by the crappy economy and a drive to cut costs--comes after the Friday acquisition of India's Meditronics, an X-ray systems specialist, for an undisclosed sum.

image from flickr user Jan Tik used under a creative commons license