KaloBios, formerly run by Martin Shkreli, files for bankruptcy

KaloBios, the troubled South San Francisco drugmaker taken over by Martin Shkreli last month, is seeking bankruptcy protection less than two weeks after his arrest in connection with securities fraud.

Under Shkreli, Turing acquired the rights to a treatment for a rare parasitic infection that mainly strikes pregnant women and raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

With Shkreli in charge, KaloBios also planned to rack up big profits on a decades-old drug that treats a parasitic infection.

When it was revealed in November that Shkreli had acquired a controlling stake in publicly traded KaloBios, a failing drug developer doing research on cancer treatments, its shares soared 20 percent in a day.

Two weeks after he became its CEO, KaloBios agreed to buy the U.S. rights to benznidazole, which is used to treat a parasitic infection called Chagas disease.

KaloBios said it planned to get quick marketing approval for benznidazole without running costly clinical studies and said it wanted a price similar to new hepatitis C drugs that cost around $1,000 per pill, or more than $80,000 for a course of treatment.