Merck leads drug stocks up

Shares of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) were up after analysts at Credit Suisse upgraded the stock rating from a neutral to an outperform and raised the target price from $35 to $47.

Credit Suisse cited the many promising products in Merck's pipeline. Merck Chief Executive Officer Richard Clark had told a group of investors at a conference in San Francisco last week that ten of the Merck's products were set to generate sales of at least $1 billion each in 2009.

Shares of Pharmacyclics (Nasdaq: PCYC) were up as Dow Jones Newswires reported that company executives had actively been meeting with potential investors, which led to renewed interest in the company.

Shares of both Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Inhibitex Inc (Nasdaq: INHX) were up in earlier trading after the two announced that their partnership was ready to begin Phase I testing of a vaccine against staph infections. Pfizer shares remained up as Inhibitex shares returned to their earlier levels.