Improving the management of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases has been a dream that seems to be happening slowly but surely in the past years. The improvement has gained energy and speed in 2015. The advancement in treatments has been demonstrated on several inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, including psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Crohn’s disease, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and many other autoimmune diseases. Psoriasis   …

The market looks like angry, probably very angry, as stocks are in a severe selloff mood. There will be many explanations like usual, but it is difficult for us to speculate this time over the correctness of the offered explanations, including the Iran Saudi Arabia crisis, which led to an increase in the oil price whose decrease has caused the previous market’s bad mood. Like …

Prohost Letter #388 TOPICS - 1. AN INDISPENSABLE SHORT INTRODUCTION 2. GENE EDITING 3. GENE THERAPY 4. CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY 1. GENE EDITING Exon Skipping: Biomarin (BMRN); Sarepta (SRPT); These firms are waiting FDA approvals for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) Gene Editing Technology Competitors: Cellectis S.A. (CLLS); CRISPR; PTC Therapeutics (PTCT) Firms Using Different Approaches For DMD Treatment (see Below) Zink Finger Tech: Sangamo (SGMO); RNAi …

To shareholders who were stupefied with an instigated selloff of Incyte’s (INCY) stock today, we say do not get panicky. Nothing is wrong with Incyte, no bad news was announced with any of the firm’s 12 ongoing clinical trials or with its approved drug Jakafi, which demonstrated progressive growth since it was launched.  So, a clever correct move now would be taking advantage and accumulate …

Prohost Letter #385 An Evaluation of Prohost Picks and Some Other Interesting Biotechnology Companies The Top-Tier Group The indiscriminate attack on the biotech sector impacted the best biotech firms more than it did the worst. In other words, the attack devastated the undervalued, without correcting the stock price of overvalued, or even valueless, firms. The problem is that those who instigate computer programs selling of …

Incyte (INCY) and Merck (MRK) announced the expansion of their ongoing clinical collaboration to include a Phase 3 study evaluating the combination of epacadostat,Incyte’s investigational selective IDO1 inhibitor, with Keytruda® (pembrolizumab), Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy. The trial is for the use of the combination as first-line treatment for advanced or metastatic melanoma. The Phase 3 study, which is expected to begin in the first half of 2016, …

Prohost Letter #384 The Assassination of the Biotech Sector The Market (Part 2) On Friday September 18, 2015, the biotechnology sector occupied the news headlines for two different reasons. The first was the sudden unexplicable and unexpected plummeting of the biotech sector. The stocks were flying sky high until modday and suddenly, all the biotech stocks, without exception, took a dive. The second reason was the triumph of …

Prohost Letter #383 The Market - Recent tails about the market and the biotech sector are true thrillers. By true we mean no-fiction. The accounts lack common sense. Professionals' interpretations of the stocks' and of the market's moves are bizarre and misleading. General investors complain only when the stocks' volatility gets out of hand, yet, do not object to the hype, or interferes against the baseless …

After decades of attempting, but failing, to harness the immune system power to treat cancer (Cancer immunotherapy), novel approaches based on new discoveries have finally demonstrated they can do the hard job. These treatments, however, are facing challenges which must be dealt with. Will TrovaGene (TROV) succeed in dealing with the challenges? Indeed, using the body’s own immune system to fight cancer is working by …

Prohost Letter #378 Part 2 2015 ASCO ANNUAL MEETING What a Big Revolution in Oncology! The ASCO meeting projected the huge advancement in the understanding, diagnosing and treating cancer. What looked as if a sudden explosion has brought in the big change, the change was, in fact a slow, deep-rooted evolution, built up over a long period of trial and error with the failures constituting …

Prohost Letter #378 Part 1 Views and Visions TOP-TIER BIOTECHNOLOGY COMPANIES GILEAD We wrote a lot about Gilead (GILD), doing our best to protect investors against negative gossip that filled the media and aimed at misleading and insulting investors’ intelligence. We never lowered our target based on the perpetrated, fabricated stories, which made many investors lose confidence in Gilead’s strategy and sell their stocks, thus, …

Prohost Letter #377 PICKING BIOTECH FIRMS Before Investing in Them Raising the bar in designating small drug developing firms as biotechnology firms has occurred several times since 2011. In that year, many technologies were tremendously enhanced, which enabled them to realize superior goals, i.e., produce safer and more effective breakthrough drugs for chronic debilitating and life-threatening diseases. Prohost Portfolios picks, which have outperformed other industries’ …

Prohost Letter #376 WHILE LOOKING AT THE BIOTECHS SCIENTIFIC FUNDAMENTALS We keep an eye on other factors That influence the stocks Investors who pick their stocks based on the firms’ solid scientific fundamentals, technological capabilities and pipeline products’ promises are mostly long-termers. They usually keep the stock they meticulously picked until they reach the goals that motivated them to pick it in the first place. …

Prohost Letter #375 Part 1 BIOTECHNOLOGY: THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA STATE- OF-THE-ART APPROACHES FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF CHRONIC AND DEADLY DISEASES ARE IN HUMAN CLINICAL TRIALS We are encouraged by some novel treatments for chronic diseases and cancer and we are optimistic about results coming from their early- and late-phase trials. Picking advanced therapeutics is the magic word Sesame in the formula “Open Sesame”, which, …

Incyte and Agenus Announce Global Alliance to Develop Novel Immuno-Oncology Antibodies Today’s news is good for Agenus (AGEN) whom we kept in our portfolio because of many reasons – all have been mentioned in our previous articles. What makes today’s news about the collaboration between Incyte (INCY) and Agenus (AGEN) more exciting is that it was not the first that demonstrate the firm is on …