Medical World News

[Preciouslife1]

Fear These Three Biotech Stocks: Illumina, Inc.(NASDAQ:ILMN), Peregrine Pharmaceuticals(NASDAQ:PPHM), Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc.(NASDAQ:ARNA)

They say good things come in threes. If so, biotech companies could be in for not just another year of outperformance, but another decade. The first era of biotech was a building phase, when companies created their first blockbuster drugs. The second, current one, has resulted in a four-year rally that reflects the sector’s transition from a cluster of one-hit wonders to mature companies with multiple blockbuster products. And now the third is just starting to emerge – Credit Suisse calls it Biotech 3.0 – that looks likely to continue to 2020 and beyond.

For the past four years, biotech stocks have been the top-performing industry in the S&P 500, and the recent outperformance has been notable: a 74 percent gain in 2013 (versus 30 percent for the S&P 500) and a 42 percent gain in 2014 (versus 11 percent). And Credit Suisse Head of Global Biotechnology Research Ravi Mehrotra expects the stocks to beat the market once again this year. “This multi-year outperformance has not been a simple sentiment-driven bull run, but rather a fundamental rerating of the biotech sector,” he writes in a recent report published this year.

On the trading floor, shares of Illumina, Inc.(NASDAQ:ILMN) dropped -1.77% to close at $145.03. The $ 20.99B company on October 6, 2015 announced it has expanded the rights of use for the HiSeq X Sequencing System to allow customers to perform whole-genome sequencing of non-human species. The updated rights of use will take effect immediately for existing customers of the HiSeq X Ten and HiSeq X Five, and will apply to all new customers of the sequencing systems.

Driven by the world’s first $1,000 human genome and significant demand for population-scale sequencing, more than 125,000 human whole-genome samples have been sequenced on the platform since its release in January 2014. The updated rights of use will allow for market expansion and population-scale sequencing of non-human species in a variety of markets, including plants and livestock in agricultural research and model organisms in pharmaceutical research. Previously, it has been cost prohibitive to sequence non-human genomes at high coverage.

“The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is excited to be able to sequence non-human genomes on the HiSeq X Platform,” said Emma Millican, Director of Scientific Operations. “Understanding the genetics and biological processes of non-human organisms is a major area of focus for the Sanger Institute and this update will enable large-scale whole-genome sequencing projects, important for public health, that otherwise would not have happened. The Sanger Institute plans to extend whole-genome population sequencing to many more medically relevant organisms in the future.”

Peregrine Pharmaceuticals(NASDAQ:PPHM) closed at $1.04 with a decrease of -4.59%. The $ 206.35M company on October 15, 2015 announced that it has expanded its ongoing cancer immunotherapy clinical collaboration with AstraZeneca to include a second, later-stage trial. The companies will now also evaluate the immunotherapy combination of Peregrine’s phosphatidylserine (PS)-targeted immune-activator, bavituximab, and AstraZeneca’s anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor, durvalumab (MEDI4736), in a global Phase II study in patients with previously treated squamous or non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The randomized Phase II trial will be conducted by Peregrine.

As part of the Phase II bavituximab and durvalumab combination trial, patients will be evaluated retrospectively for the correlation between their PD-L1 levels and clinical outcomes. This new study builds on the non-exclusive collaboration initiated between the companies in August 2015 to conduct a Phase I/Ib basket clinical trial evaluating the combination of bavituximab and durvalumab with chemotherapy in multiple solid tumors.

Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc.(NASDAQ:ARNA) ended at $2.2.20 by losing -0.45%. The $ 532.93M company on October 27, 2015 announced plans to improve efficiencies and reduce costs as it focuses on the advancement of its research and development priorities.

Arena intends to focus on its key strengths by concentrating near-term activities and resources primarily on:
•advancing its APD334 program, including the ongoing Phase 2 clinical trial for ulcerative colitis, and potentially exploring additional indications beyond inflammatory bowel disease through small pilot studies;
•advancing its ralinepag (formerly known as APD811) program, including its ongoing Phase 2 clinical trial for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), and potentially exploring enhanced efficacy with other classes of PAH agents;
•advancing its APD371 program through a Phase 1 multiple-ascending dose clinical trial;
•supporting Eisai to advance the MACE, diabetes conversion, MACE plus and other endpoints of the ongoing BELVIQ® (lorcaserinHCl) cardiovascular outcomes trial (CVOT), also known as the CAMELLIA study, and seeking potential regulatory approval for BELVIQ XR®, a once-daily formulation of BELVIQ;
•maintaining its core research function to discover and advance drug candidates;
•assessing strategic collaboration opportunities for certain clinical- and earlier-stage programs; and
•meeting manufacturing obligations to collaborators and others, while reducing commercial manufacturing overhead to achieve potential savings.

As part of this initiative, Arena will reduce its US workforce by approximately 80 employees or 35%, which Arena estimates will reduce annualized cash expenditures for personnel by approximately $11.0 million. Arena plans to implement additional cost control measures to further reduce its expenditures, including reductions at its Swiss manufacturing facility, Arena Pharmaceuticals GmbH. TY HUTSCHI