The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research
Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, … Read more
Valuing Biotechs
Using HGSI ($23.85) as an example, Motley Fool’s uses an expected value method for calculating the biotech’s future price based on binary events such as the announcement of PDUFA results on March 10, 2011 for its lupus drug, Benlysta. Value Investing, Biotech Style Based on the chart below, expected value: $5 x 0.05 + $20 … Read more
The New Biotech Model
In the meantime, one biotech model gaining traction is the single asset, infrastructure-lite, development model, which deploys modest amounts of capital to develop a single compound to an early clinical data package which can be partnered with pharma. The asset resides within an LLC, and following the license transaction, the LLC is wound down and … Read more
Frugal Healing: An Economist Article
China and India have led the global economy out of a deep recession and despite their impressive growth, they have potential some would say to grow even more. For investors, this means there remains still an opportunity to get a piece of the action, especially in certain sectors such as medical technology. Sales of medical … Read more
The Money Players in biotech are back
ImClone Ex-CEO Waksal Is Back I’m following Kadmon Pharmaceuticals for reasons that are almost too obvious to state. Waksal and his cadre of biotech men are considered in my estimation as the money players of the industry. They successfully raise the funds to develop the drugs they can market to the world, handsomely profiting from … Read more
BioJabber: Our pick from R&R
Cyclacel has several catalysts on the horizon With FDA approval of the SPA for Phase 3 trial for CYCC’s Sapacitabine in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the company is better positioned to entice a big pharma to secure a partnership, especially with three other studies pending for MDS and NSCLC. Specifically, CYCC has yet to disclose … Read more
R&R Conference wrap-up
Rodman Rambles: Promising Biotechs
Biotech Stock Mailbag: Hep C Stocks to Watch
Investors should think about the evolving Hep C drug market like a buddy system. Everyone, meaning every company developing a new Hep C drug, needs a buddy, a partner, a wing man. Partnering is essential because in five or 10 years, maybe sooner, doctors will be treating Hep C patients with various combinations of drugs — i.e. drug cocktails — in many of the same ways that doctors treat HIV patients today.
The current standard of care for treating Hep C is a 48-week, two-drug regimen consisting of long-acting interferon (either Roche’s Pegasys or Merck’s(MRK) PEG-Intron) plus the generic medicine ribavirin.
If Vertex and/or Merck are successful in getting their respective direct-acting antiviral drugs approved next year, a third drug will be added to the Hep C treatment cocktail. If that add-on drug is Vertex’s telaprevir, for instance, newly-treated Hep C patients will take telaprevir plus interferon-ribavirin for 12 weeks, followed by another 12 weeks of interferon and ribavirin. Total treatment time, just 24 weeks or six months. Based on what we know today about telaprevir, cure rates of 75% will be achieved compared to about 40% today with standard of care alone.
Roche’s Experimental Medicine shows promise in resistant tumors
An experimental medicine being developed by Roche Holding AG’s Genentech unit may help a common chemotherapy drug kill cancer cells that are otherwise resistant to treatment, a study found.
A combination of the compound, GDC-0941, and the doxorubicin chemotherapy drug slowed the growth of breast and ovarian tumors in mice, according to the study in Science Translational Medicine.
Abbott’s Stint at a new Stent
Abbott’s stent, a scaffold-like device the size of the spring in a ballpoint pen, was inserted into one of Lamb’s coronary arteries in March 2006 and inflated under pressure to prop open the passage, which had been clogged by fatty plaque. Unlike metal stents, Abbott’s is made of polylactic acid and designed to dissolve within two years after implant. It left a healthy, unencumbered vessel, John Ormiston, Lamb’s doctor in Auckland, tells Bloomberg Businessweek in its Sept. 13 edition.
If studies confirm the device helps arteries and disappears without causing clots or other risks linked to metal models, the product may take the lead in the $4 billion-a-year market for drug-coated stents, as it would be safer for patients, said John Capek, Abbott Park, Illinois-based Abbott’s executive vice president of medical devices. Demand would fall for Abbott’s Xience stent and rivals from Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific Corp. and Medtronic Inc., he said.
“It may truly become the next revolution,” Capek said in a telephone interview. “The data are provocative enough at the moment to demonstrate that has a very real chance of happening.”
