Health System Builds Telehealth Network; Sees Great Return on Investment
Source: Healthcare Finance News, Erin McCann  (5/22/12)
"Polycom, a video conference and communications company, is helping Saint Vincent Health System build a telehealth network by visually connecting healthcare professionals and patients in virtual environments across 26 facilities in Pennsylvania." More >

Prostate-Cancer Screening Isn't Worth Risks, US Panel Says
Source: Bloomberg, Alex Nussbaum  (5/22/12)
"The 16-doctor panel urged against screening for men of all ages. The report cited the slow growth of most prostate tumors as well as false positive rates that may be as high as 80%." More >

Prostate Cancer Screening Isn't Worth Risks, US Panel Says
Source: Bloomberg, Alex Nussbaum  (5/22/12)
"The 16-doctor panel urged against screening for men of all ages. The report cited the slow growth of most prostate tumors as well as false positive rates that may be as high as 80%." More >

Five Companies in the Casey Portfolio Worth Watching: Alex Daley
Source: George S. Mack, The Life Sciences Report  (5/17/12)
Biotech and medtech expose investors to rapid growth in healthcare innovation. In this exclusive interview with The Life Sciences Report, Chief Investment Strategist Alex Daley of Casey's Extraordinary Technology matches science to unmet needs to bring big ideas and big returns to investors. More >

Buyout Options Gaining a Foothold
Source: Alex Philippidis, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News  (5/17/12)
"Deals involving buyout rights have two features that make them attractive to smaller partners: up-front payments and a longer-term path to liquidity for their investors." More >

Biotech Stock ETFs: How to Ride the Surge in Mergers & Acquisitions
Source: Don Miller, Money Morning  (5/16/12)
"Investing in biotech stocks requires not only an understanding of the company's finances, but also knowledge of the company's potential based on its products and technologies. You can reduce some of the guesswork by using exchange-traded funds, which give you exposure without betting the farm on a single company." More >

Stakeholders Share Data to Design Better Trials for Neurodegenerative Diseases
Source: Patricia F. Dimond, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News   (5/15/12)
"The Coalition Against Major Diseases is an industrial consortia of companies willing to share precompetitive knowledge and work in support of projects identified as high priority by the FDA and in the interest of public health." More >

Venture Capital Is Not Dead. . .Just Resting!
Source: MD+DI, Brian Buntz  (5/14/12)
"Summarizing her thoughts on the venture capital model, venture capitalist Lisa Suennen jokingly quoted Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch: 'It is not dead. . .it is just resting!'" More >

UMass to Break Ground on Biotech Testing Facility
Source: Herald News, Grant Welker  (5/13/12)
"The facility allows start-up companies to conduct research, test and scale up their products, or partner with other startups. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth says it will eliminate a common barrier for entering the life science industry." More >

Expression Profiles Accurately Predict Breast Cancer Response to Chemotherapy
Source: Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News  (5/11/12)
"Scientists have identified two gene-expression profiles that can predict how well breast tumors respond to specific types of chemotherapy, independent of standard variables such as age, tumor grade and estrogen receptor status." More >

Will Mayo v. Prometheus Fire Up Pharma?: Kevin DeGeeter
Source: George S. Mack of The Life Sciences Report  (5/10/12)
Newly discovered biomarkers could provide physicians with information that will aid in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The big question for investors is whether, in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling Mayo Collaborative Services Inc. v. Prometheus Laboratories, companies will be able to profit from that innovation. In this exclusive interview with
The Life Sciences Report, Kevin DeGeeter, senior analyst with Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., shares the names of a select group of companies with good prospects, focusing on those targeting "sweet spots" in personalized medicine. More >

Investment Banker Kevin DeGeeter's Best Idea Yet
Source: George S. Mack, The Life Sciences Report  (5/10/12)
Personalized medicine and targeted therapeutics are about narrowing down disease to achieve more definitive diagnostics and then finding more precise therapies. One could argue that every person's cancer is a different disease because the tumor cells contain the patient's own genome and are therefore different from the next individual's tumor cells. Newer genetic-based technologies are useful in detecting disease that was previously undetectable. Analyst and Director Kevin DeGeeter of New York City-based investment bank Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc. follows personalized medicine and medical device companies ranging from small- to mid-cap, where investors can still reap multiples on original investment. I recently interviewed him for The Life Sciences Report and learned to look at cancer treatment in a new way. More >

GlaxoSmithKline Goes Hostile in Bid for Human Genome Sciences
Source: Miyanville, Brett Chase  (5/9/12)
"GlaxoSmithKline has launched a hostile bid for Human Genome Sciences, three weeks after the biotech spurned a $2.6B takeover offer." More >

Looking at Small Medtech and Biotech in Canada: Nick Waddell
Source: George S. Mack, The Life Sciences Report  (5/3/12)
Is there a developing Silicon Valley model in Canada? Not quite yet, but Publisher and Founding Editor Nick Waddell of the Vancouver-based Cantech Letter would like to see that happen. Meanwhile, he's looking for—and finding—exciting small- and micro-cap ideas as potential big returners. In this exclusive interview with The Life Sciences Report, Waddell discusses current favorite healthcare names that will surely surprise people who have not been looking North. More >

Computing the Best High-Resolution 3-D Tissue Images
Source: ScienceDaily  (4/25/12)
"Real-time, 3-D microscopic tissue imaging could be a revolution for medical fields such as cancer diagnosis, minimally invasive surgery and ophthalmology." More >

Electrifying Biotechnology: A Shot at Shocking Profits
Source: Patrick Cox, Penny Sleuth  (4/20/12)
"The discovery of reversible electroporation revolutionized biotechnology research. Cracking open a cell's pores allows researchers to get stuff into cells they weren't able to before." More >

Deep Value Found in Small Medtech: Jason Mills
Source: George S. Mack, The Life Sciences Report  (4/19/12)
Medical device companies need to demonstrate four qualities to be good investment ideas, according to Senior Medical Devices Analyst and Managing Director Jason Mills of Canaccord Genuity. In this exclusive interview with The Life Sciences Report, Mills shares his precise criteria and pinpoints specific growth names that are trading at value levels. More >

Five Ways to Play Heart Health
Source: George S. Mack, The Life Sciences Report  (4/19/12)
You almost never hear an analyst say his sector is trading at a significant discount across all market caps. But when I interviewed Senior Analyst and Managing Director Jason Mills of Canaccord Genuity for The Life Sciences Report, that was his evaluation of the cardiovascular space in medtech. A negative environment can certainly create opportunity, and Mills says specific medtech stocks are trading at "trough levels" not seen since the technology meltdown of 2001–2002. More >

The Wireless Revolution Hits Medicine
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Ron Winslow  (4/16/12)
"The digital world has been in a separate orbit from our medical cocoon, and it's time the boundaries be taken down." More >

Junior Resource and Biotech Investing Share Profit Potential
Source: Alex Daley and Doug Hornig, Casey Research  (4/12/12)
Several Casey Research publications focus on the junior resource sector because this is a prime speculative market—one where individual investors can still turn a small amount of money into a fortune, provided they bring the proper tools to the table. Yet resource juniors by no means stand alone. Biotechnology is another good market for speculation. In fact, despite the very different science and economics at work, the biotech and junior resource sectors share some interesting traits. Investors will find a lot to like in both. More >

Playing the Immune System for Profit
Source: George S. Mack, The Life Sciences Report  (4/12/12)
I had an opportunity to pose some questions once again to Stephen Dunn who is president and senior managing director of research at LifeTech Capital, a division of Aurora Capital, which has a presence in growth hotbeds India and China. LifeTech is one of those boutique investment banks that researches small-cap stocks that need capital and attention. The firm specializes in biotech and medtech, and it really does get an opportunity to get inside little companies to know the people and to understand the science. Dunn gets to do things that he wouldn't get to do in a bulge-bracket banking environment, and after 25 years in his industry he has done nearly everything, including negotiations for intellectual property agreements to product deals, venture capital and mergers and acquisitions. . . More >

Nanotechnology Used to Hunt for Hidden Pathogens
Source: ScienceDaily  (4/9/12)
"The new nanoparticle-based technique may be used to detect microbes that have challenged scientists for centuries because they hide deep in human tissue and are able to reprogram cells to successfully evade the immune system." More >

Small-Cap Ideas with Double-Digit Growth Potential: Frederick "Rick" Wise
Source: George S. Mack of The Life Sciences Report  (4/5/12)
You can own large medtech and diversified medical supply companies for low volatility and incremental upside in a trending economy (yawn. . .), but small- and mid-cap companies offer the real double-digit growth possibilities. In this exclusive interview with The Life Sciences Report, Analyst and Managing Director Frederick "Rick" Wise of Leerink Swann shares small-cap ideas that could wake up investors' portfolios. More >

Beautiful Music from Small Medtech
Source: George S. Mack of The Life Sciences Report  (4/5/12)
I was already aware that the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) produced the world's greatest musicians, but I didn't know that great sellside analysts were also minted there. Managing Director Frederick "Rick" Wise of New York City-based Leerink Swann is a proud MSM graduate, and he likes to say that he took the "classical route" to Wall Street. "I believe music was great preparation for being an analyst," he says. "I've been deciphering symbols and interpreting them and conveying the bottom line to people on a stage." More >

Antibody Offers Hope Against Cancers
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Victoria Colliver  (4/3/12)
"In a potential breakthrough for cancer research, Stanford immunologists discovered they can shrink or even get rid of a wide range of human cancers by treating them with a single antibody." More >