Motley Fool: 3 Biotech Stocks to Buy on Sale

[Fishermangents]

Motley Fool, March 18, 2016

3 Biotech Stocks to Buy on Sale
The broader market has mostly rebounded from its early 2016 tumble. The biotech sector hasn't, and our contributors see some bargains available in it now.

Sean Williams about Geron:
There are plenty of profitable biotech stocks on sale given the meltdown the industry has experienced since the beginning of the year. Yet, my pick for a bargain that could be worth scooping up is one with just a single drug in development and no profits to speak of: Geron (NASDAQ:GERN).

Geron's key product is imetelstat, an experimental oligonucleotide that's designed to be an inhibitor of telomerase. The good news is I don't need to throw scientific words at you to describe how exciting a drug imetelstat could wind up being.

In early-stage clinical studies that tested imetelstat as a treatment for myelofibrosis (MF), a rare cancer of the bone marrow that leads to scarring, some patients were observed with partial, and even complete, responses. This is noteworthy because no prior clinical study for MF patients utilizing any therapy had exhibited a clinical response. In fact, the only approved therapy for MF is Incyte's Jakafi, a JAK inhibitor that merely reduces symptoms associated with MF, such as enlarged spleen and anemia. The assumption here is that if imetelstat were to make it to market, it would displace Jakafi as the preferred MF treatment.

Imetelstat has also attracted the attention of Johnson & Johnson, which gave Geron $35 million up front and dangled an additional $900 million for meeting developmental, regulatory, and commercial milestones. Not only does Johnson & Johnson have deep pockets and an experienced sales staff to help Geron, should imetelstat win approval for MF and/or myelodysplastic syndrome, but J&J also has a knack for picking winners from the small-cap realm. Its last partnership with Pharmacyclics more than five years ago yielded the blood cancer drug Imbruvica, which may wind up doing more than $7 billion in peak annual sales.

Geron's roughly 40% tumble from its peak could represent a nice opportunity for biotech investors who have a higher tolerance for risk.

[Fishermangents]

Forgot the link. Here it is:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2 ... lnk0000004