MD Becker Partners' newsletter covering the life science industry
Next month [November] marks Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. Visibility for the disease is already on the rise due to recent celebrity victims, including Apple’s Steve Jobs and Hollywood actor Patrick Swayze. According to the American Cancer Society, pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease with the worst mortality rate and an overall 5-year survival rate lower [...]
Monoclonal antibodies, which have been approved for immunological, anti-infective, ophthalmic, cancer and other categories, represent one of the most successful therapeutic drug classes. Ten monoclonal antibodies have been approved for cancer therapy alone, including three blockbuster products sold by the Roche Group (RHHBY) – Avastin® [bevacizumab], Rituxan® [rituximab], and Herceptin® [trastuzumab] that collectively represented nearly [...]
Shares of Dendreon Corporation (DNDN) have declined significantly from an all-time high of $57.67 in late April 2010 when the company received U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approval for Provenge® [sipuleucel-T], the first active immunotherapy approved for the treatment of cancer in the U.S. Today, shares of Dendreon traded as low as $28.01, down [...]
Although a controversial topic, activist hedge funds and private equity firms typically use a small equity stake in an underperforming company to put public pressure on its management and board of directors with the goal of increasing stakeholder value through cost cutting, changes in corporate strategy or management, capital restructuring, asset divestiture and other tactics. [...]
Approximately 250 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with diabetes mellitus and that number is growing with the increasing obesity population. Broadly, patients with diabetes are characterized by elevated blood glucose levels that result from either insufficient insulin secretion (type-1 diabetes) or ineffective insulin action (type-2 diabetes). The market for treating patients with diabetes is [...]
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