SI has been so quiet lately--at least the
threads where I hang out, so I will compress
all my thoughts for the afternoon into one
convenient post, hehhe.
First...Rick seems to be looking into PolyMASC
to some degree--it may be the recent movement
in Onyx that has him interested, don't know,
but do a keyword search for that now and then.
Of course, I habitually read all of Rick's
posts--as well as about ten other folks--sometimes
a few things even sink through this thick skull of
mine. Will keep the vlts thread apprised if anything
turns up.
As far as Valentis' prospects for success, well
I've not been following the gene therapy thing long
enough to be able to judge anything yet. As you
may already know, my strategy is merely to throw
a few darts at the very cheapest stocks in this area,
then watch for developments. So far I've gotten
diluted in a couple things, but I really need to
follow this sector a few more years before I give up.
I do intend to add to several of my positions later,
if general market conditions drag this stuff down even
more--Valentis is up at the top of the list for another
1000 shares, since I only have a "third" of a full position
right now. Speaking of buying...I actually added 1500
ARIA just the other day bringing that one up to 5k
shares. Occasionally I get a PM from, oops, promised
not to reveal his name, but you can guess if you follow
the company at all;-) Those are my two gene therapy
type stocks, at the bottom of this message I'll drop
off my watch list.
Regarding Gene Therapy in general:
Just now I was reading in the Economist about the
European backlash against genetically modified crops.
Good lord! Imagine if folks started whining about
genetically modified people (say, you modify a person,
well, some cells at least, to prevent a person from
dying of his cancer--oh no, we cant have that!)
But along those lines, I do think the safety issue
is important to follow--if overblown. Just in the
last few days I've been reading about antisense ODN's,
the first generation of these last only a few minutes,
clearly gene therapy is not going to make any Frankenstein
monsters if the main problems are simply finding a
vector which works, or the very short life of the
agent etc etc, And nobody is tampering with germ cells.
I suspect folks don't invest in this sector mainly
because they don't understand it, fair enough.
That said, nice when you can shut the therapy off, or
regulate it. Naturally I want to bring up Ariad's
ARGENT once again--there are a couple of us who still
have not given up on that one. Frankly, I think the
whole damn thing with the toxic was a scam to keep
the stock down. I've loaded up on warrants, even
some at 5/64ths the other day, based on big news late
in the summer or next fall. The meter is running however,
and at these levels, why not just buy the stock.
Finally, I am starting to look closer at the more
familiar names in Gene Therapy--Vical and Isis for
instance. I'm certainly not swapping my current picks
for these two yet--Isis looks risky and expensive
(they even have debt--something I'm not used to seeing
in my stocks). In a few days or so I'll have some comments
for the Isis thread--not that they need or want my two
cents, and as I suggested to them, you really want to
take a look at biotechnav.com, I subscribed to the
three month deal, some very good analysis in there
I think.
AFFX AGTO ARIA AVGN AXPH CEGE CHIR CLTX
CRGN ENZ GENE GENXY GENZ GLGC GZMO HGSI
HYSQ IMNR INCY ISIP MLNM MYGN NGEN ONXX
OSIP TGEN TKTX VICL VLTS VYSI |
