Personalized Medicine Achieves Milestone with Lung Cancer Drug
Friday’s rally picked up steam today as devastation from Hurricane Irene was less than expected and consumer spending was up. Greek stocks also rallied on a bank merger. Why are Greek stocks boosting this market? NASDAQ and the S&P were up more than 2%. Our favorite trading vehicle including leading tech, biotech and Internet stocks, the QQQ is up 8.5% over 5 days and 2.35% today. Keep in mind however that the S&P is still off 4% YTD.
Mid-cap biotechs are up 3.5% with only one loser out of 35 in our index.
For the first time since early August buyers even rushed into the depressed diagnostics and tools sector as our index was up 3.3% with a dominant green screen. Our top picks in a beaten down sector are GenProbe (GPRO $58.85), Illumina (ILMN $51.64) and Exact Scientific (EXAS $7.68). Roche COO Daniel O’Day added a bullish note on the diagnostics industry saying that as healthcare austerity measures take hold companion diagnostics will help allocate most effective therapies. This has been one of the prevailing trends in therapy. On August 26 Pfizer (PFE $18.91) announced approval of XALKORI (crizotinib) a targeted therapy for lung cancer with a companion diagnostic that “underscores the importance of molecular testing in non small cell lung cancer (NSCLS). The biomarker test developed in collaboration with Abbott (ABT $50.93) detects the presence of the ALK gene a genetic driver of NSCLS. The approved lung cancer drug in combination with a companion diagnostic marks a milestone in oncology. Pfizer has 25 drugs in Phase 3 and ten drugs in FDA registration.
IVD News mentioned an article from two MBA/MD students at Thomas Jefferson University who have published on personalized medicine:
The History and Future of Personalized Medicine
Daniel Pucheril and Smiriti Sharma, MD/MBA candidates at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia.
Here is our biomarker review from BIO 2010.