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 …