Sep 16, 2016 | Macroeconomics
“The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.” –Fyodor Karamazov, in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov The Karamazov father in Dostoevsky’s seminal novel is always promising to change his shameless ways. The only problem is that he never does, and soon enough, it becomes clear that Fyodor Karamazov is incapable of telling the truth. He cannot even confess something to a priest without changing his story in the same breath. So it comes as no surprise that, eventually, no one believes what he says anymore. Here is a headline from January about the Federal Reserve: “Fed Policy is Looking Hawkish” (hawkish meaning the Fed will raise interest rates). No rate hike. How about March? “Wall Street in for a Hawkish Surprise: Goldman.” No rate hike. May? “Fed likely to hike in June if data improve: Minutes.” Was the data good in June? From CNBC, “US created 287K jobs in June vs. 175K expected.” That sounds good! No rate hike. Shall I go on? The refrain is always the same: the economy is great! It’s humming along! The Fed is, time and again, “inclined” to raise rates. Then they don’t. There’s always a stated reason, of course: first it was China not doing well, then the first quarter growth was not so great, then Brexit came, and so on. But like any relationship expert will tell you, if your friend keeps finding a reason why he or she can’t make...
Apr 28, 2016 | Biotechnology
Many of the biotech firms we have focused on so far in this series have, as their primary goal, alleviating the symptoms of, or finding cures for, certain diseases and conditions. This week’s biotech focus, however, takes a different perspective: the idea of disease prevention through specific vaccination. The idea of vaccination is, of course, well-known and not particularly novel—the extent to which Novavax (NVAX) implements it, however, may prove to be. Most of us can remember the time when our pediatrician first placed a needle in us. First the cotton swab, then the irritable prickling sensation, then the small plastic toy or candy that followed up the doctor’s visit. Those vaccines, however, have saved lives by helping human immune systems acquire a “taste” for diseases since Louis Pasteur developed the technique in the 19thcentury. The purpose was simple: to prevent maladies before they occur. This is what Novavax hopes to do with their products. Novavax Novavax Incorporated is a “clinical-stage vaccine company committed to delivering novel products to prevent a broad range of infectious diseases,” according to their self-description. The first step in studying such a company is to ask the question: what diseases? Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) RSV attacks the lower respiratory tract in individuals of all ages, especially at the extreme ranges of the age spectrum. Infants and older adults especially, in light of their undeveloped or aging immune systems. According to the US National Library of Medicine, RSV is the “most common germ that causes lung and airway infections in infants and young children. Most infants have this infection by age 2.” This is an...
Apr 14, 2016 | Biotechnology
A few months ago, we briefly discussed new developments in the use of programmed cell death (or cell apoptosis) to combat cancer. Today we are going to take an in-depth look at one of the biotech companies involved in this fascinating realm, examine some of its prospects and probabilities for success, and offer a better understanding of just what it entails to convince a cancerous cell to shut itself down. The company is Soligenix (SNGX), and its pipeline specializes in cures for what are known as “rare and orphan” diseases, that, is diseases, including forms of cancer, that do not afflict large groups of people (relatively speaking) and thus are often difficult to find funding to cure. While this would limit Soligenix’s market if it were only focusing on a handful of specific orphan diseases, the fact that the company has a novel treatment idea for battling cancer—the focus of this week’s biotech digest—makes Soligenix an interesting case study. The market—T-cell lymphoma Cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) is a type of cancer of the white blood cells of the body; malignant versions of these white blood cells, rather than helping the body’s immune system, gravitate towards the skin and result in the appearance of lesions. There is currently no cure for the disease, and life expectancy can vary from 2.5 to 12 years depending on when one is diagnosed with it. Current treatments involve either skin therapies or the use of UVA rays, which can sometimes cause mutation or secondary skin cancers. The goal, therefore, is to find a potential cure without the side effect of harming other cells. Enter...
Apr 7, 2016 | Biotechnology
One of the distinctions that we at BTA look for in analyzing biotechnology firms is between pipelines (as a reminder, a pipeline is a series of proposed drug candidates) that are all based off of a single system created by the company, and pipelines that involves a variety of different drugs based on entirely different technologies. ChemoCentryx (CCXI) fits into this former category, with an intriguing pipeline that, while jarring at first in its breadth, ultimately offers some interesting possibilities. An eye scan of their pipeline would make one assume that their plan is to tackle as many diseases as possible and solve them all. There is, however, a method behind what at first glance appears to be a chaotic pipeline: the chemoattractant system. The science ChemoCentryx focuses its science on a single system or “discovery,” and they have developed numerous drug therapies around this discovery/system. Their targets are autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, the types of conditions that are the result of the immune system misdiagnosing the healthy cells of the body as foreign, unhealthy invaders. The body comes to “attack itself,” in a sense, and the symptoms of autoimmune diseases can be significant, ranging from chronic pain and inflammation to fatality in rare and/or “orphan” diseases (diseases that affect relatively few individuals and for which there is not a large market to create drug solutions). ChemoCentryx believes that a key to solving these diseases is to work on the chemoattractant system through the use of specially-designed chemokines. What is the chemoattractant system? The chemoattractant system is a form of chemotaxis, which is defined as the way...
