January 5, 2023 In Today's Down Market the stocks that are outperforming are as follows: Reata Pharmaceuticals (RETA) bluebird bio Inc (BLUE) And Vertex Pharmaceuticals . . . This content is for paid subscribers. Please click here to subscribe or here to log in.

FDA Approves bluebird bio Product Skysona for Early, Active CALD SKYSONA is the first FDA approved therapy shown to slow the progression of neurologic dysfunction in boys with this devastating and fatal neurodegenerative disease. The U.S. FDA has granted Accelerated Approval of bluebird bio’s (BLUE) SKYSONA® (elivaldogene autotemcel), also known as eli-cel. SKYSONA® is indicated to slow the progression of neurologic dysfunction in boys 4-17 …

bluebird bio Receives EC Approval for  bluebird bio (BLUE) announced that the European Commission (EC) has granted marketing authorization of SKYSONA™ (elivaldogene autotemcel, Lenti-D™) one-time gene therapy for the treatment of early cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (CALD) in patients less than 18 years of age with an ABCD1 genetic mutation, and for whom a human leukocyte antigen . . . This content is for paid subscribers. Please click here to subscribe or here to …

Important News and Results from Akero Therapeutics Akero Therapeutics (AKRO) announced that full results of the main portion of its Phase 2a BALANCED trial in biopsy-confirmed NASH patients with F1-F3 fibrosis have been published in Nature Medicine. The study shows investigational NASH Drug Efruxifermin (EFX) reduced liver fat to normal levels and reversed fibrosis after 16 weeks . . . This content is for paid subscribers. …

Clinical Holds on bluebird bio Gene Therapies were Lifted by the FDA The U.S. FDA has lifted the clinical holds on the bluebird bio (BLUE) Phase 1/2 HGB-206 and Phase 3 HGB-210 studies of LentiGlobin for sickle cell disease (SCD) gene therapy (bb1111) for adult and . . . This content is for paid subscribers. Please click here to subscribe or here to log in.

Prohost Portfolio PLUS (formerly The Week in Review) Your Questions, Our Answers In the upcoming issues of Prohost Portfolio PLUS, as with all our Tables, we will include observations and target changes as well as any current news we feel is important enough to be reviewed and/or discussed. We hope you will visit us weekly for updates. Included in this Issue are the Following: Anixa …

Updated Findings from bluebird bio bluebird bio analyses demonstrate lentiviral vector BB305 unlikely to be the cause of AML in a clinical study of LentiGlobin for SCD bluebird bio initiated a process with regulators to resume clinical studies bluebird bio (BLUE)

bluebird bio Suspends LentiGlobin Studies bluebird bio (BLUE) placed its Phase 1/2 (HGB-206) and Phase 3 (HGB-210) studies of LentiGlobin gene therapy for sickle cell disease (SCD), bb1111, on a temporary suspension due to a reported Suspected Unexpected Serious Adverse Reaction (SUSAR) of acute myeloid leukemia (AML . . . This content is for paid subscribers. Please click here to subscribe or here to log in.

bluebird bio Decision to Separate its Businesses bluebird bio (BLUE) will retain focus on its severe genetic disease (SGD) and will launch its oncology business (Oncology Newco) as a new entity. The Board of Directors at bluebird bio approved this decision and it is anticipated that the spin-out of Oncology Newco is to be tax-free . . . This content is for paid subscribers. Please click here to …

Prohost Letter #443 The Biotechnology Industry The Biotechnology Industry revolutionized the arts of life sciences with accomplishments promising a tremendous improvement in the treatment of chronic, debilitating, progressive and life-threatening diseases. The improved approaches have been game changers in the treatment of cancers and genetic-derived hereditary and non-hereditary chronic diseases. The out-performance was made possible through the biotech industry’s creativity, innovation and remarkable productivity. The …

bluebird bio bluebird bio (BLUE) financial results and business highlights for the third quarter 2020 are important to be aware of when volatility and negative analysis lack common sense. The stock selloff has been steady and progressive while there was no bad news emanating from the clinical trials on gene therapy that would provide cures or from any FDA . . . This content is …

Bristol-Myers Squibb and bluebird bio  Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and bluebird bio (

The Market May be Plummeting But Prohost Picks are Not Biotech stocks had a strong start, but the gains disappeared in many stocks as the market demonstrated bearishness following a long-lasting rally. Currently, during the strong economic conditions, commentators attribute the reasons for the market’s upside and downside moves to China’s positive, or negative ongoing negotiations rather than to fair correction of overbought or oversold …

RegenxBio Rebounding RegenxBio (RGNX) has the viral vectors which could safely deliver genes into the cells. The firm has improved the adeno-associated viruses making them safe and effective gene delivery vehicles. One of the three currently approved gene therapy products, Zolgensma® for pediatric spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), marketed by Novartis, used RegenxBio’s adeno-associated . . . This content is for paid subscribers. Please click here to …

Stock Market Volatility  Stocks can move up and down for various reasons but not all of them have anything to do with the real value of the firms. As a matter of fact, almost all stocks outperform for a while, reverse their course to underperforming, then restart the cycle. The stock market in its entirety does the same thing for reasons that have nothing to …

Prohost Letter #436 What Are We Experiencing Now? The bizarre market underperformance progressing rather than regressing and the good economy and the employment gains are the least utilized factors after being the most influential on the stock market performance. We are witnessing the most bullish analysts being confused, hesitating to give their followers a crystal clear explanation about the market’s skepticism, anger and volatility. The …

Prohost Letter #435 The Value of the Biotech Companies A Continuation of Prohost Letter #434 A Recap The biotech near and long-term values, we insist, must be based on the firms’ scientific capabilities, products’ potentials and financial results. In the past months the stocks evaluations by bloggers, and some assessors, have been tailored to mislead investors into serving the purposes of the manipulators’ weird agendas. …

bluebird bio Has Promising Results from Its Lenti-D Gene Therapy for CALD Good results have come from bluebird bio’s (BLUE) updated results in the clinical development program for its investigational Lenti-D™ gene therapy in patients with cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (CALD) at the 13th European Pediatric Neurology Society (EPNS) Congress in Athens, Greece. bluebird bio's Starbeam Trial . . . This content is for paid subscribers. Please click here to subscribe or here to …

Diseases of the Back of the Eye Diseases of the back of the eye, such as: age-related wet macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema, are currently managed with injections of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) drugs into the gel-like substance (the vitreous humor) that fills the eye between the lens and the retina. The currently used age-related wet macular degeneration injections are: Lucentis, which belongs …

Gene Therapy Stocks Experiencing Selloffs  Every investor in the biotech sector must have experienced selloffs of the stocks from companies specialized in gene therapy, gene editing, antisense, RNAi and mRNA therapies. Recently, bluebird bio’s (BLUE) stock was devastated. The selloffs occurred for many reasons, most of . . . This content is for paid subscribers. Please click here to subscribe or here to log in.

 The News Prohost Was Waiting for to Post Its Special Letter Prohost has one eye on the development-stage biotech and biopharmaceutical companies' scientific fundamentals and accomplishments as well as the financial results on the revenue-generating firms. Prohost has the second eye on the market performance, its volatility and the possible reasons it sinks every other day, or every other week, in calmer days during a …

Prohost Letter #433 Treating Hemoglobinopathies The most common genetic blood disorders are the hemoglobinopathies: sickle cell disease (SCD) and beta-thalassemia. Millions of people around the world are affected by these two conditions in which genetic defects impact the hemoglobin production.We called the past week “The Hemoglobinopathies’ Week”. Important and impacting news came with promising clinical trials data from two products aimed at treating sickle cell …

Why has bluebird bio Been Hammered in the Market Recently? Investors should be asking why bluebird bio (BLUE) has been hammered in the market recently before asking why the stock gained $6.37 in trading yesterday. Why was it subjected to a selloff a few days ago? Why? When you consider the announcement of conditional marketing authorization, granted from the European Commission (EC), for the firm’s …

Zynteglo™ from bluebird bio Gets European Conditional Approval European marketing authorization for Zynteglo follows the fastest assessment of an advanced therapy medicinal product (ATMP) as part of the European Medicines Agency’s Priority Medicines (PRIME) program. Zynteglo is bluebird bio’s first gene therapy to gain regulatory approval. Gene therapy is, indeed, moving towards the clinic to provide cures; to save people from an early death from …

A Great Day for Bluebird bio and Celgene Read the Clinical Trial Results for Myeloma What a Great Day! Jobs reaching the moon. Inflation not yet showing any concerning signs. A fiercely rebounding stock market. Those who are still listening to pessimistic opinions are missing the fact that technologies and biotechnology are standing at the starting line. They are not at the finish line. For …

Governor Cooper to cut ribbon on bluebird bio facility Bluebird bio (BLUE) announced today, in its press release, the official opening of its first wholly owned manufacturing facility in Durham, N.C. The new facility will produce the lentiviral vector for the company’s investigational gene and cell therapies, including bb2121 and bb21217 for the treatment of multiple myeloma, and potentially LentiGlobin™ for transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia (TDT) and …

We love to read news about gene therapy as it is the only possibility for curing diseases that no known treatment can halt or delay their progression. The attempts to use gene therapy failed ambitious researchers for several decades before the revolution that led to understanding the genome and even decades  more after the publishing of the genomic map that actually started the real revolution. …

The Week in Review #38 SYNOPSIS Good News and Setbacks During the Departed Week from the Prohost Portfolio FIRMS WITH GOOD NEWS SPARK THERAPEUTICS The most important happening, with the most exciting positive impact, has come this time from our picked gene therapy company, Spark Therapeutics (ONCE). It was electrifying news, which announced acquisition by Roche (RHHBY) of Spark Therapeutics; at a price of $114.50 …

The Week in Review #35 Politics and the Market The market tumbled today as Theresa May, the Prime Minister of England, delayed the Brexit vote!  The question becomes, what will be put forth next as a legitimate reason for bringing the market down and eroding investors’ gains? The weather? A war among gangs in a fourth-world country? Maybe the resignation of the chairman of a …

Today, the market took another beating as a result of either an intentional or an unintentional lack of clearance by professionals in describing correctly the standing of employment and other current economic realities. They pinpointed irrelevant reasons in an effort to justify the Stock Market's tumbling.  One big headline was that 150,000 added jobs did not meet expectations. They never explained whether those jobs were all …

The Week in Review #31 IN THE DEPARTED WEEK NOVEL MIGRAINE DRUGS ARE APPROVED ELI LILLY AFTER AMGEN AND TEVA In less than five months, the FDA approved three products belonging to four drug developers – all targeting calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) for the prevention of migraine headache. The latest for Eli Lilly (LLY) last week . . . This content is for paid subscribers. …

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN) and bluebird bio, Inc. (BLUE) announced a collaboration to apply their respective technology platforms to the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel immune cell therapies for cancer. The collaborators will specifically leverage Regeneron’s VelociSuite® platform technologies for the discovery of human antibodies as well as T cell receptors (TCRs) directed against tumor-specific proteins and peptides, and bluebird bio will contribute its field-leading expertise in gene transfer and …

IN THE NEWS PTC THERAPEUTICS  PTC Therapeutics (PTCT) stock, which dipped yesterday, probably on news announcing a public offering of 4,000,000 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $27.04 per share. Yesterday, in a crazy market that looked as if the bull and bear are boxers knocking each other down every 10 minutes, PTCT lost around $5. The stock seems to rebound in today’s premarket …

Prohost Letter #414 GIANTS & DWARFS - We believe it’s a useful idea bringing The Week in Review into the Prohost Letter this time. We thought it would be easier for the readers to get last week’s updates and comments together with the Letter’s subjects and its Prohost Portfolio’s observations. In the Week that said au revoir, things happened that are worth citing. New development-stage …

Coming Soon... The Week in Review #3 Gilead Acquisition - Rallying by Association - Improving on Cancer Treatments...

As we wrote yesterday, immunotherapy checkpoint inhibitors represent a great advancement and big changes in the management of cancer. It is pertinent, though, to keep in mind that these immuno-oncology products will not be successful with all cancers. Immune checkpoint inhibitors Keytruda (Merck) and Obdivo, Bristol-Myers Squibb and others are already approved around the world for several cancers. We also know that these immunotherapy products …

IMPRESSIVE RESULTS?  Bellicum Pharmaceuticals’ (BLCM) drug BPX-501 is described as a safe and effective product that can offer children with cancer and other serious diseases the opportunity to beat their intractable sicknesses. The drug enables the patients who are in desperate need for a bone marrow stem cell transplant to use unmatched donors’ stem cells through lowering their adverse effects. The most recent clinical trial …

Prohost Letter #410 JUNE PDUFA DAYS This month, the FDA will decide on the approvals of drugs belonging to companies that Prohost has picked for investment. Usually, granting approvals rallies the stocks of the drugs’ developing firms. Sending Complete Response Letters for demands that might delay approvals would cut a substantial percentage of the stocks’ values, while rejections would cause the stocks to falter. Let’s …

AT ASCO CAR-T Was Created to Stay BlueBird Bio CAR-T Results Bluebird Bio (BLUE) presentation was well received at ASCO after the firm stated results demonstrating that all the 15 evaluable patients in the clinical trial of its chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) drug “bb2121 responded to treatment. Data were convincing demonstrating 89% of the patients observed their tumors shrink with 27% seeing their …

Prohost Letter #409 ASCO The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting is around the corner. The Meeting, which will begin on Friday June 2, 2017 and will end on Monday 5, 2017 will be different than the past years for many reasons, including the following: -­ Checkpoint inhibition as Immunotherapy for cancer treatment moved from wishful thinking a decade ago, to promising cancer treatments …

Novartis signed two different separate licensing agreements with two development-stage firms, Bluebird (BLUE) and Celyad (CYAD). The signing of the agreements, enabled Novartis to license the two firm’s proprietary technologies, both related to improving Novartis’ genetically engineered immunooncology CAR- T cells. CELYAD The Celyad/Novartis Agreement Celyad announced a non-exclusive license agreement with Novartis for its US patents issued for the production of allogeneic CAR-T cells. …

Making Sure that CAR-T Therapy for Cancer Succeeds Academic Researchers Identify a New Process to Raise Natural Armies of Cancer-Targeting T Lymphocytes Outside the Body Unleashing More Power to the Immune System to Fight All Types of Cancers GOOD NEWS FOR CAR-T IMMUNOTHERAPY DEVELOPERS Researchers from Mayo Clinic and the University of Washington have developed a new culture process to improve the efficacy of engineered …

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 …

Prohost Letter #375 Part 2 Novel Breakthrough Cancer Immunotherapy Approaches PART 2 In Part 1 of this issue, we described the immunotherapy approach that aims at modulating immune checkpoint proteins, thus unleashing the T cells to do their natural task of detecting, attacking and eliminating cancer cells. The approach is a success, as we reiterated, with greatly encouraging results. Researchers in large oncology centers and drug …