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POPSOne Company's Toxic Agenda or Our Poisonous Way of Life? Marie-Monique Robin's "The World According 
Both text and film are extraordinary models of investigative reporting, each comprising chilling and compelling indictments of a company with a long history of producing varieties of poison. I have no doubt that had a human individual, rather than a multinational corporation, been responsible for the death, suffering and destruction Marie-Monique Robin documents, the International Criminal Court and other jurisdictions around the world would be clamoring for that person's head. Yet, Monsanto continues to operate so much more freely than the disguised Radovan Karadzic. Only last week The Independent reported that Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly planning to promote GMO food - 90 percent of which is produced by Monsanto - over the objections of their own populations. Both Ms. Robin's film and her book use a montage of Monsanto advertising, promotional films, claims and pledges to illustrate the fantasy chemical, then biotech/life sciences company it purports t
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POPSSenomyx Have you noticed that Campbell's Tomato Soup now tastes extremely salty? Here's why! I e-mailed Campbell's and asked what was different quite some time ago. (They did not respond)
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POPSBiotech Buzz Kills Adam Feuerstein over at TheStreet.com always has smart things to say about biotech stocks. In his column today, he makes both Onyxx, which has a big-selling cancer drug, and Exelixis, which is testing cancer drugs, sound very risky. With the markets a mess, it's hard to see how the extremely risky world of cash-hungry biotechs is going to appeal to investors.
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POPSOuch. From $7 to 70 cents in a year. That's biotech. If Synavive does really have pain-killing properties, CombinatoRx execs might want to take some themselves.
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POPSEye Implants to Fight Progressive Blindness So far, Neurotech's approach appears to be safe for patients with degenerative diseases of the retina. That was the finding of a phase I trial with 10 patients, the results of which were published in 2006. "The real challenge is whether we'll be able to translate the positive observations in animals in humans," says Tao
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POPSImClone's Mystery Suitor The biotech not only rejects the bid from Bristol-Myers Squibb, but claims another company is interested in paying more.
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POPSGilead Drug Approved Viread gets approved for hepatitis B on its PDUFA date. A nice win for Gilead. For investors, the big questions about the company come down to valuation. Most analysts love the company; doubters just think shares are overpriced.
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POPSRacing Toward Super Seeds Methinks it would be a humanitarian gesture to charge these giant unethical corporations with crimes against the planet.
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POPSIpsen Buying Tercica The weak dollar strikes again, as another U.S.-based biotech gets bought by an overseas drugmaker. Ipsen already owned 25% of Tercica, which makes a hormone for treating children who are not growing adequately. Still, that 104% premium is pretty eye-catching.
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POPSLundbeck Likes Myriad. Should You? It's a good sign that Lundbeck was willing to pay $100 million up front, but Flurizan is still seen as a bit of a long bet. If it shows a real benefit, even a small one, this could be a pretty big drug, but the risk here is big, too.
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POPSNano RNA Delivery Novel delivery agents could mean a more targeted way to turn off disease genes. The MIT researchers, however, developed a way to make more than a thousand different delivery agents in parallel using a simple, one-step chemical process. And that allowed the team to quickly discover effective delivery molecules, including several that surprised the researchers. "We wouldn't have necessarily sat down and said, this is a structure that's going to work," says Daniel Anderson, a research associate at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. "It was only by making and testing over a thousand that we were able to get to that place."
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POPSSweet Deal:Economical Biodiesel Chop up sugarcane. Feed it to bacteria. Produce diesel fuel. Bacteria will begin pooping out Mack-truck grade diesel fuel in test amounts next year and in commercial amounts in 2010 under a new joint venture announced today between a Northern California biotech company and a Brazilian sugarcane processor. Unlike ethanol, which draws the bulk of alternative biofuel attention, the bacterial fuel can be distributed through existing infrastructure, according to Amyris.
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POPSGTX Soars A pretty conservative drug development program appears to have paid off for GTX, a small biotech company.
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POPSAvastin Approved For Breast Cancer This lifts a big weight for Genentech, and will ease the minds of biotech executives everywhere who were worried that the bar for approval was just getting too high. Click on the highlighted text to read Reuters' take.
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POPSEx-Reps Say Amgen Used Patient Records Psoriasis is a skin condition where there is excessive skin production, and inflammation. It is not contagious, and while it's cause is not known it is believed to have a genetic component. The Drug being pushed by biotech company Amgen, is a genetically engineered injected drug known as Enbrel, that is known to have severe side effects. It is only approved for use in extreme cases of psoriasis.
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POPSNice Bump For Amicus Shares in Amicus Therapeutics have been trading near a fifty-two week low thanks to data from another study that was less positive than investors hoped. This new data is only looking at blood test results, but it does give some confidence that the basic idea behind the company -- pills to replace the expensive biotech enzyme drugs sold by companies like Genzyme to treat rare diseases -- shows some promise. Shares are up 14% in pre-market trading.
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POPSBiogen Unbought Shares in Biogen Idec are down 27% after hours after the company announced that it did not find a buyer. Why would any big pharmaceutical firm would purchase it at this inflated price. The record of big pharmaceutical and biotech mergers is spotty at best.
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POPSFDA Panel Pans Avastin The panel voted by a margin of one vote that the FDA should not approve Genentech's Avastin as a treatment for breast cancer. This is bad for Genentech, but it also likely to hurt the stocks of biotechnology companies in general. This decision reinforces the view that the FDA is getting tougher in approving new drugs. Every medicine has risks and benefits, but many in the drug industry complain that the risks are starting to weigh more heavily in that equation than they did before. This has more symbolic weight because Genentech is often seen as biotech's standard bearer, and because Avastin is one of the first targeted therapeutics. Of course, the drug is still on the market saving lives -- this decision applies only to the question of whether or not Genentech can market Avastin as a breast cancer treatment. The final word will rest with the FDA early next year.
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POPSGene Therapy Trial Resumes This is good news for Targeted Genetics, and for the field of gene therapy in general. It's hard to think of an area of biotech that makes more sense on paper (a gene is broken? well fix it!) or one that has had more trouble getting a product to market.
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POPSCelgene Buying Pharmion For $2.9 Billion This is a sensible move for Celgene, maker of the multiple myeloma drugs Thalomid and Revlimid, and a big payday for holders of Pharmion shares, which had already doubled this year.
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POPSImagine the Possibilities
BRUCE BRYAN, a surgeon, and Gene Finley, an oncologist, think they may have a new weapon in the war against cancer. It's a squirt gun. Not just any squirt gun, mind you. Theirs shoots glow-in-the-dark water. They've also created luminescent cake frosting, radiant hair mousse and greeting cards with lettering like neon. "Watch this," says an associate in a lab coat, swallowing a beaker full of glowing soda pop. "It's protein. Totally harmless!"Dr. Finley landed on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and in an oncology practice at the V.A. hospital here, where he studies the genetics of colon cancer. Dr. Bryan, meanwhile, made some money in real estate, quit his surgery practice in Arizona, began doing pro bono medicine in the Dominican Republic and adopted a low-overhead lifestyle aboard a houseboat. ONE EVENING during a power outage , Dr. Bryan opened a beer. Wouldn't it be cool, he thought, if the beer glowed? And so it began! Read about it, very cool!
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POPSDendreon Completes Study Enrollment This is expected, of course, but still important because Dendreon's prostate cancer immunotherapy, Provenge is a controversial drug. Experts disagree on whether a survival benefit seen in an after-the-fact analysis of previous trials is real. This study should end the debate, one way or another. One caution: The first analysis, next year, is a first look. Provenge will need to be very effective to make this hurdle. But it will get a second chance when the trial completes. This is one of a string of results expected for cancer immunotherapies over the next year.
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