Criterion Bioscience Investor News Blog

[CriterionBioScience]

Is personalized medicine the wave of the future?
The theory of “personalized medicine” is perched on four struts. These are i) having the right patient, ii) using the right drug, iii) prescribing the right dose and iv) at the right time, with the ultimate challenge of tailoring a patient’s medical treatment to the individualities, necessities, and preferences of a patient during prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of medical care. Although not a novel concept, personalized medicine espouses treating the individual, which has been the focus of modern day medicine for quite some time... - read more at http://edge.criterionbioscience.com

[CriterionBioScience]

How to Predict if a Drug Will Pass Clinical Trials 100% of the Time
The secret to predicting pipeline success is to go into your garage, collect all of the scrap metal, nuts and bolts, some glass tubing and construct yourself a flux capacitor. Once the flux capacitor has been engineered from the tidbits of your worthless garbage, carefully place it into your fusion powered DeLorean and set your time clock for 2115. Perhaps, by this time quantum computers that power a mega-advanced augmented reality cell simulation (ARCS) for the virtual diagnosis of disease and drug design may exist. Until then, current technology cannot predict the thousands upon thousands of molecular interactions that occur between molecules inside a cell every millisecond. It is these very interactions that will need to be explicitly mimicked, determined and catalogued in astronomically huge datasets in order to design a drug that specifically targets its biomarker without affecting all of the other molecules in the system, resulting in no indirect side effects. To minimize the direct side effects related to inhibit/activating the biomarker target, well, that is another layer of complexity. read more at: http://edge.criterionbioscience.com/how-to-predict

[CriterionBioScience]

The Underlying Mechanisms of Alzheimer’s Disease Uncovered – an Opportunity for New and More Effective Medicines
Tauopathies, specifically Alzheimer’s disease (AD), are neurodegenerative disorders that slowly evoke dementia through years of accumulation of abnormal clumps of amyloid-ß plaques and tangles of mis-folded tau protein aggregates in the brain. The formation of the filamentous neurofibrillary tangles of hyperphosphorylated tau protein is known to be the key pathological feature of AD, as well as a number of other neurodegenerative diseases, and it has been postulated that the excessive accumulation of the amyloid-ß plaques lead to the tangles of tau protein. In addition to the plaques and tangles, there is also a loss of connections between brain neurons. Over time, the neurons lose their ability to function and communicate with other neurons and eventually die. The damage spreads to the hippocampus, an essential structure for memory formation. The damage continues to accumulate until the brain’s supportive functions are no longer possible resulting in death. Approximately one out of every 65 (5.1 million) Americans may have AD and there is no cure. There are, however, four pharmaceutical therapies that are approved by the FDA to treat the symptoms of AD. Donepezil (Aricept®), rivastigmine (Exelon®) and galantamine (Razadyne®) are used to treat mild to moderate AD (donepezil can be used for severe AD as well). Memantine (Namenda®) is used to treat moderate to severe AD. These drugs work by regulating the chemicals that transmit messages between neurons (neurotransmitters). They assist in maintaining thinking, memory, and speaking skills, and help with certain behavioral problems. However, these drugs don’t change the underlying disease processes and appear to be patient specific. read more at: http://edge.criterionbioscience.com/the-underlying-mechanisms-of-alzheimers-disease-uncovered-an-opportunity-for-new-and-more-effective-medicines

[CriterionBioScience]

The Ebola Hype and Chimerix
With all of the media publicity over the migration of the Ebola virus from Africa into the United States, it is no wonder that savvy investors are looking to capitalize on companies developing a vaccine or drug to suppress the virus. As such, we have observed several companies that have enjoyed stock increases by taking advantage of the Ebola media hype. These windfalls have been fueled by a combination of public fear and investor optimism.

One of the companies that is benefiting from the hysteria is Chimerix Incorporated. Chimerix is a small but strong pharmaceutical company located in Durham, North Carolina that we have been following since they went public in April 2013. The company is mainly focused on developing an inhibitor called brincidofovir, which is a nucleotide analog conjugated to a phospholipid. The analog is being tested for its anti-viral properties against Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Adenovirus (AdV). Currently, Chimerix is in late stages of clinical trials for these indications and should they pass FDA approval, their product will allow them to benefit from the post-operative (including stem cell transplants) infectious disease market that is projected to be worth $1 billion by 2019 (based on Criterion’s internal market research). Generally speaking, their approach is scientifically sound and they will be a valuable company in years to come based on these platforms. So what is up about Ebola? read more at: http://edge.criterionbioscience.com/ebola-hype