Andy Kessler on medical nanotechnology
This is an interesting video where Andy Kessler, an author of books and expert on business, technology, and the health field, talks about the future of medical nanotechnology.
Are biotech stocks going to waste?
Biotech stocks were thought of as completely safe and lucrative investments over the last decade or two, and almost every financial expert never hesitated to recommend biotech stocks as top-notch. However, things aren’t looking that good lately.
Last week in San Francisco hundreds of biotech companies attended the J.P. Morgan’s annual biotech conference, and it seems that it didn’t turn out to be as successful as many hoped. Investors are bailing out — they finally realized that waiting for a new drug to get developed to get rich isn’t really the way to go, especially after finding out that new drugs in human testing fail about 87% of the time. Even the group that’s supposed to endorse investing in biotech – Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) reported that they predict that 45% of publicly traded biotech companies will run out of cash in the next 6 to 12 months.
However, BIO hopes that the situation should get better because they asked the incoming Obama administration for a biotech stimulus plan, but gave the odds of such a bailout succeeding in Congress at only one in three.
“The biotech model over the last 25 years has been to assemble innovative science, raise two or three rounds of venture capital, advance your R&D program to a point at which you can go public, and then continually tap the public markets to meet your capital needs,” said Richard Aldrich of RA Capital Management. “But the backdrop for all of this was the greatest bull market in history,” Aldrich added. “It was a very permissive financial environment, which is what early stage biotech needs. The bull market has ended, and the biotech model we all came to know and love, has ended with it.”
It seems that now is a good time to buy, if you have the funds. However, one needs to be careful, because there aren’t many “safe bets” out there.
Source: portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2009/01/19/Biotech-Boom-Finally-Peters-Out
Potential cancer target identified
Scientists from the Dartmouth Medical School have discovered two proteins that work together in order to ensure proper chromosome segregation during cell division. Their research might lead to the discovery of new ways of treatment of tumors that shuffle chromosomes.
Solid cancer tumors commonly lose the ability to separate their chromosomes accurately, a process called chromosomal instability. These tumor cells nonetheless keep growing and have a poor prognosis.
“We show that the function of two proteins, called Kif2b and MCAK, is to correct improper attachments during cell division to prevent the mis-segregation of chromosomes” said Dr. Duane Compton, the leading author. “The two proteins share the workload: Kif2b acts early in cell division and MCAK acts later. This cooperation underlines the importance of proper chromosome segregation for the healthy life of all cells.” Compton also said that his team did a research last year on chromosomal instability and came to a conclusion that the main cause was that chromosomes make errors in hitching to the spindle apparatus—the fiber-like structures that orient and separate chromosomes in dividing cells. “These improper attachments occur normally during cell division in all cells, but in the tumor cells, the improper attachments fail to get corrected and cells attempt to divide with persistent improper attachments.”
Now, their research shows the two proteins complete their job by regulating the attachment between the chromosomes and the spindle apparatus.
“We discovered how to make the tumor cells faithfully segregate their chromosomes every time the cell divides,” said Compton.
Compton, along with his team, plan on performing direct tests to thoroughly explore the connection between chromosomal instability and tumor development.
The research is published in Nature Cell Biology. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Source: dhmc.org
