The news flow continues with deals and talk of deals. I want to end this week (will be at home for the holidays Thursday and Friday) with a follow up and then a new idea. 1. SRPT continues to be hated and while it is frustrating I love the hate. Goldman put out of note […]
December 20 Biotech Update
Well, this has been a strangely interesting day for the week before Christmas. I thought the bulk of news was done but I clearly spoke too soon. There is some good news for the sector as well as some good-well-maybe-bad-let-us-argue news. I am going to go through these as sort of quick hits as none […]
December 19 Biotech Update
We are winding down and gearing up. The year is winding down so the news flow seems to be drying up but we are starting to gear up with 2017 predictions and JPM. Perhaps tax loss selling is slowing but I still think that might be the biggest headwind into the end of the year […]
December 16 Biotech Update
I am back from jury duty and will try and catch up on the events of this week but will continue that next week before the holiday break. The trading in the sector seems to have been volatile in that there seems to have been no real movement but some twists and turns to get […]
AGIO- Pivot to PKD
Agios Pharmaceuticals came to market in 2013 as a promising cancer metabolism company. Three years later, it has pivoted to rare disease. AG-120, an IDH1 mutant inhibitor being developed for oncology indications, remains the most advanced pipeline compound, but is no longer the main value driver. For that we look to AG-348 and AG-519, mid […]
December 8 Biotech Update
So the sector seems to be moving beyond the Trump Tantrum if only slowly. It sort of helps that we have something else to obsess and argue about with Alzheimer’s data. While we have years before the BIIB phase III data and nothing has been settled, it is important data worth a focus for today. […]
December 7 Biotech Update
Here we go again. Just when you thought we could focus on fundamentals we have to talk about politics and politicians again. There was apparently an interview where Trump talked about tackling drug prices but the fact is there is nothing he can do alone. The republicans still control congress and it seems unlikely that […]
ASH Update: TGTX
ASH 2016 has turned out to be an important convention for many small biotechs, and will likely be remembered as a break-out event for CAR-T therapies. Results from the Phase 1 TGR-1202/Ibrutinib combination study may prove crucial for the future of TG Therapeutics. Escalating doses of TGR-1202 ranged from 400mg to 800mg with a corresponding 420mg of […]
December 6 Biotech Update
It was a good day for most of the sector and ASH names except the ones I seemed to own. In any case, it was good to see the sector respond positively to ASH in general despite the odd reaction in a couple of names. I will continue with my ASH related reports today. 1. […]
ASH Update 2: BLCM
Bellicum Pharmaceuticals’ leading clinical candidate is BPX-501, individualized T-cells transduced with a controllable suicide gene. They are being studied for use as an add-back following T-cell depletion during Haploidentical Stem Cell Transplant (HSCT). For individuals with certain hematological disorders, whether malignant or not, stem cell transplants represent the only hope for a cure. Siblings make […]
ASH Update: TRIL
Trillium Therapeutics presented interim data from its ongoing Phase 1 trial of the SIRPaFc TTI-621 at ASH this past weekend. These highly anticipated results gave a deeper look into the molecule’s safety and efficacy profile as well as potential mechanism of action. Trillium is at the forefront of a scramble to target the SIRPa-CD47 checkpoint […]
December 5 Biotech Update
ASH has more or less come and gone. This is usually a highly anticipated conference that has some game changing data. While this was once again highly anticipated, I have been saying for weeks that this is an ASH of incremental as opposed to thesis changing data. A lot of the interesting data were updates […]
December 2 Biotech Update
ASH starts soon and the sector needs some more positive news as it is really starting to lag. Outside of the initial election pop it has been pretty bad in terms of relative performance. To be fair, the news outside of the election has been failures and secondaries. Obviously the sector needs more than the […]
November 30 Biotech Update
We are in a lull before a flood of data arrives at the end of this week and then into ASH next week. There is not a lot of new but we did have some interesting moves yesterday that are worth talking about. 1. I have already talked about the BLUE/CELG BCMA CART data that […]
November 29 Biotech Update
It seems like the election move is taking a time out and some consolidation is happening. That is not surprising given the move and (at least for the sector) the news. Despite the pause, we are heading into a historically good period for the sector as well as a time of increased M&A activity. I […]
November 28 Biotech Update
I vaguely (not really vaguely) recall noting last Tuesday that we were likely done with news unless some company wanted to sneak bad news in right before the holiday. I was correct but wrong. We had two majors pieces of negative news (LLY and JUNO) and surprisingly the sector managed to hold up relatively well […]
November 22 Biotech Update
More of the same in terms of slow news and likely decreasing volumes into the weekend. We do have a couple pieces of fundamental news to talk about but nothing groundbreaking in its importance. 1. The most meaningful is the removal of the partial clinical hold of the head and neck combo trials for AZN. […]
November 21 Biotech Update
An exciting return to the sector for me and I mean that sarcastically. Not really much to talk about heading into this Thanksgiving week and I would not be surprised if the only news we see this week is from companies trying to sneak out bad news. Volume should be low with drifting price action […]
Dave Trading – Where is the value?
Dave gave me one line when I asked him about value… “not much value. Maybe write about how to make profit in a momo market while not risking too much.” Sure thing Dave! IBB is still well off its highs, but in the large cap space it may not be worth selling puts with such […]
November 16 Biotech Update
Again we do not have a ton of news but we had one of our first year end catalysts, which I will talk about. In terms of the year end catalysts, this one is pretty low on the list of importance but it was certainly one we were watching. 1. MDCO released their data at […]
