Some biotech picks for possible acquisition target -
by Rachel Leheny, biotech analyst for Warburg, Dillon, Read,
a guest on CNBC early this morning:
Sangstat, Gilead, Trimeris, and Incyte
Don't know if this has been posted anywhere
Sangstat, a transplant company, has a franchise in transplant products. They have a generic cyclclosporin and another one, thymoglobulin (sp?) that helps people with acute rejection of organs. The company was sued late last night by Novartis, and so the stock will probably be weak today. She thinks Novartis is suing because they are a little afraid.
Gilead GILD is in the anti-viral area and has a broad antiviral franchise. They are developing drugs for AIDS, hepatitis and flu. They have the new oral flu drug which should be on the market for the next flu season. She thinks they have a very strong pipeline, with two two promising drugs for AIDS s and basically they own most of the drugs with the exception of the flu drug which will be co-promoted with Roche.
Trimeris TRMS has an AIDS drug which is clearly unique. It is going after the AIDS virus and prevents the virus from injecting itself into the cell. The drug is very promising. It showed tremendous viral load drops in patients who were resistant on average to 9 drugs; patients that are basically untreatable.
Leheny says the reason the stock dropped the last few days was for technical reasons. There was a distribution and so there was a lot of stock on the market so she thinks that was a great buying opportunity.
She thinks Incyte INCY is a premier genomic company, they have great genomic databases, it's a great company, great management really strong. She said it's one that you buy and put away.
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