Looks like Biotechs are getting a bit more popular on CNBC. Yesterday BGEN announced earnings and David Molowa was on, recommending AMGN, AVIR, LGND. HGSI's new B cell stimulant was also expensively discussed. Today Jim Vincent, BGEN CEO, and Bill Haseltine, HGSI CEO were on as was Dan Gillespie, Rydex Biotechnology Fund.
I summarized the Haseltine review and all of the above can be found linked to the CNBC Specials table at pharmacognizance.com
The HGSI story was a good news / bad news story. The good news is the discovery of a new B cell stimulant which may have a targeted market similar to Neupogen.
The bad news was the fact that the drug had not yet entered human trials and would take 2-3 years for approval (which I would place in the optimistic category).
The protein was identified by screening 15,000 signal proteins.
From the technology standpoint, it seems that the availability of 15,000 gene products for screening was the major advantage. The 15,000 number is large and approaches like LGND's are more focused in some respects (the families are smaller than 15,000).
The ability to define proteins as signal proteins has been known for quite some time, and hundreds have been known for some time.
However, the HGSI screening was able to find one that had been missed and I wasn't able to access the Science article today to get more specifics. |
