The time has come for redefining the meaning of “creating shareholders value” in the biotech sector. Pinpointing the real value has become imperative. It is the road to a fair assessment of innovative biotech firms. It helps investors reap the fruits of the real value of excellent firms at the right time, rather than rush to sell extremely promising stocks while still undervalued. It makes investors think twice before throwing their shares of firms that are installing one by one the building blocks of their vision. Creating shareholders value is investing in the future. The cost of this investment shouldn’t be cause for downgrading the stocks because of overspending, which has become a normal pattern. We still see all development-stage biotech stock prices slashed following the announcement of their quarterly results. There is a big difference between spending on the future and spending because the money has been made available. Investors can know the difference. The first thing to look for is whether the firm has any program in development that is worth spending on, including buying firms having a technology that is badly required for the successful outcome of the firm’s program. This kind of investment should not be punished or treated as unnecessary spending. More...

One of the currently intriguing evaluations of a biotech firm is that of Array Pharmaceuticals (ARRY). Its stock has been incapable of luring investors regardless of how large is the number of its cancer products, how encouraging is the news about clinical trial results, or how generous are the upfront and promised milestone payments and royalties by the collaborating pharmaceutical companies. Array is a biotech firm that created an extraordinarily effective small molecule dug discovery and design technologies. Its technologies are state-of-the-art, built over advanced biochemistry and molecular biology. They include, high throughput screening, virtual screening, protein x-ray crystallography, structural databases and computational modeling – all assembled around a chemoinformatic databases and a library that has all sorts of molecules to pick from. The selection of molecules is made possible through its wide electronic laboratory notebook that enables scientists to generate novel predictive databases suitable for designing novel drugs out of existing molecules This drug discovery capability, which was seen by many as the most defining criterion in Array’s value, does not seem to included by the  evaluators of biotech firms. More...

At this stage, we are more interested in Ariad’s (ARIA) product pipeline than in the financial results of an era where the firm will soon move from a development-stage to a revenue-generating biotech company. Our logic could be the same as that, which led Harvey J. Berger, M.D., chairman and chief executive officer of the firm to begin his financial results’ announcement by writing about the outstanding progress the firm has made towards advancing its pipeline of cancer-drug candidates. The man wrote about the firm’s expectations about the near-term drivers of shareholder value. He wrote about interim data that will be presented later this year on ponatinib trial. More important and impacting is that Merck, the firm’s partner on ridaforolimus has already filed for regulatory approval of the cancer drug with the European Medicines Agency in the European Union, and the firm’s expectation that Merck will submit a new drug application in the U.S. shortly. Another drug, AP26113, will also begin clinical development this quarter. More...

One year ago, an anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitor called crizotinib developed by Pfizer (PF) for non-small-cell lung cancer demonstrated it shrank the tumors in most of the 82 patients after two months of treatment. Knowing in fact that it was too mature to fall for the drug, oncologists, nevertheless, couldn’t stop themselves from wowing crizotinib at the 2010 cancer conference meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The patients had advanced cancers, including some who had brain metastasis and had been treated with an average of three other drugs to no avail. Pfizer’s ALK inhibitor crizotinib showed no serious side effects. Larger trials were required, however, to confirm the drug’s safety, replicate its efficacy, see whether it would improve survival and whether cancer resistance would emerge in some patients as it usually does following initial drugs’ efficacy More...

Like almost all genuine development-stage biotech companies, Ariad (ARIA) took years to design its ambitious products, develop them, perfect them, find the right partners for its lead drug, and develop the best strategy for achieving its vision. As the years went by without tangible positive financial figures or timetabled promising forecasts, many investors replaced confidence with skepticism, and sold ARIA.  More...

Endometrial cancer is the most common cancer of the female reproductive system. Advanced cases have virtually no effective treatments. Surgery, alone or in combination with radiation, chemotherapy, and/or hormonal therapy are good as initial therapy. In advanced stages, however, surgery has no role to play and chemotherapy has limited, if any, benefit.  More...