Motley Fool: Geron's novel telomerase inhibitor is a blockbuster-in-waiting

[Fishermangents]

From the article 'Are These 3 Biotechs Destined to Be Bought Out?
Are Celator Pharmaceuticals, Geron Corp., and Juno Therapeutics barreling toward a buyout?
by George Budwell, Motley Fool, 24 April 2016

The merger and acquisition frenzy that's been spreading across the biotech landscape over the last few years might be about to hit fever pitch. After all, heavyweights like Allergan, Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD), Celgene Corp. (NASDAQ:CELG), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), and Pfizer have all signaled their intent to create value for shareholders through either bolt-on acquisitions or mergers with similarly sized peers.
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While there are probably over a dozen compelling buyout candidates floating around the industry right now, I personally think the clinical-stage cancer companies Celator Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:CPXX), Geron Corp. (NASDAQ:GERN), and Juno Therapeutics (NASDAQ:JUNO) are the cream of the crop. Here's why.
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Geron's novel telomerase inhibitor is a blockbuster-in-waiting
As I've discussed before, Geron is a small-cap biotech that seems to be structured at this stage to be eventually folded into J&J, the company's development partner for imetelstat. The long and short of it is that Geron has put all of its eggs into the imetelstat basket, hoping this novel telomerase inhibitor can prove to be a game-changer for a variety of hard-to-treat blood disorders like myelofibrosis and myelodysplastic syndrome. Most importantly, Geron has essentially handed over the bulk of clinical responsibilities to J&J's biotech subsidiary Janssen, and even slashed its workforce to a grand total of 19 employees to boot.

However, the main reason Geron seems destined, to me, to become part of J&J -- if most of imetelstat's ongoing clinical trials go as planned -- lies in J&J's recent past. Not long ago, J&J reportedly lost out on acquiring the remaining rights to blood cancer drug Imbruvica -- a drug it identified early on as a potential blockbuster, yet failed to acquire in whole in a timely manner. If imetelstat appears likely to live up to J&J's own estimates as a blockbuster-in-waiting, I doubt the drugmaker is going to make the same mistake twice. Rather, I expect J&J will decide to sally forth with a tender offer -- or not -- soon after imetelstat's wraps up its current bevy of clinical trials, thereby avoiding a bidding war that could drive Geron's price up to unreasonable levels.

Link: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2 ... t-out.aspx