Geron: A novel cancer stock/ $GERN
The cancer drug market is the fastest growing therapeutic area right now, thanks to several breakthroughs for various hard-to-treat malignancies. One unfortunate offshoot of this innovation boom, though, is that numerous drugmakers are trying to simply imitate the success of their rivals in areas such as immune-modulating antibodies, cell therapies, and kinase inhibitors. The net result is a glut of medicines that largely fail to cover new territory.
The small-cap biotech Geron, however, is bucking this trend by developing a best-in-class telomerase inhibitor called imetelstat, which is racing toward critical clinical milestones for its ongoing trials in the blood disorders myelodysplastic syndrome and myelofibrosis. These two initial indications have the potential, at least on paper, to transform imetelstat into a blockbuster product.
Even so, the market clearly isn't a big believer in this juicy value proposition, and perhaps for good reason. Geron's current market cap of $445 million appears to reflect the market's deep suspicion of unproven cancer therapies in general. And that's arguably a reasonable stance, given that the vast majority of experimental cancer therapies flame out during clinical trials. In other words, imetelstat's chances of actually reaching the market are exceedingly slim -- that is, if history is any guide.
