http://wallstreetideas.com/ Wall Street Ideas.com is the main entry portal to a family of investor oriented financial media web sites focused on creating order from the unwieldy mass of thousands of publicly traded companies. en-us Copyright © 2006 Wall Street Ideas.com, All Rights Reserved Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:30:42 EST Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:30:42 EST Wall Street Ideas wsi - RSS/XML by http://handshop.com marketing http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsirss.php 10 http://wallstreetideas.com/images/wsim.jpg http://wallstreetideas.com/ 144 30 http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=95Industry News/Market News/Personal Finance/Real Estate/Stocks/Apparel/Consumer Durables/Consumer Non-Durables/Financial/Real Estate/Retail/Retail-General/Banking/Economy/Personal Finance/Retail/Marketing/Real Estate/
Along with the sales, came some disappointments with Circuit City (NYSE: CC) in particular reporting difficulties staying competitive on the rapidly dropping prices of large flat panel televisions.

Unseasonably warm weather across a good part of the country also depressed sales of winter clothing, with reports of unadvertised steep markdowns at Gap (NYSE: GPS) stores in locations ranging from Chicago to New York. Retailers still have hopes for an additional end of year flurry, as they hope to lure the recipients of an estimated $26 billion in gift cards sold this season to rack up purchases at their end of year sales. Gift card sales were up an estimated $6 billion over the prior year. As we reported back in November, the mixed results from Black Friday were just a prelude to the real story which would not be written until the last two weeks of the shopping season. Now, we may have to wait a little bit longer to see how the gift card redemption season plays out.

As we predicted in November, smart investors might want to just sidestep the whole retailer issue and go with an easy method to pick the winners of the holiday shopping season: the Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) that own the properties and collect the rents from retailers across the nation.

As the year draws to a close, Morningstar Inc. has tabbed REITs as their best performing fund sector for 2006 with returns for the year of o .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:WMT NYSE:BBY NYSE:JCP NYSE:CC NYSE:GPS Wed, 12 May 2010 13:29:42 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=93Computer Hardware/Healthcare/Medical and Health Related Services/Medical/
The two trials, which included over 7500 adult male volunteers, was cut into two equal groups, half of whom received circumcision, and a control group did not.

The benefits to the group receiving circumcision were so great that the reviewers felt that it was unethical to continue to deny the benefits of circumcision to the control group, and recommended that they all be offered circumcision. While circumcision initially protects the men who undergo the procedure, NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. said that male circumcision could also cut “infections in women in those areas of the world where HIV is spread primarily through heterosexual intercourse.” This is an extremely important development in the drive to halt the spread of HIV, not just in Africa, where Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)

Founder Bill Gates’ Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded education and research efforts, but in many areas of the world where heterosexual sex is a major route of transmission. .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:MSFT Wed, 12 May 2010 13:44:40 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=86Market Commentary/Market News/Stocks/Automotive/Financial/Food/Petroleum and Coal Products/World Stock/Energy/Food/Agriculture/Automobiles/Highways/Construction/Chemicals/Plastics/Oil/Gas/
New York City’s Board of Health today voted to make New York City the first city in the nation to ban the use of trans fats in restaurants.

Trans fats, also know as hydrogenated oils, are fats that have had their melting points raised by the addition of hydrogen so that they would be solid at room temperature.

This gives them superior properties in dough and baked goods, as well as making them a preferred choice for use in deep frying. The ban is a result of ongoing fears that America is becoming a “Fast Food Nation” and that trans fats contribute to clogged arteries and cardiovascular diseases.

The ban is expected to have a broad impact on restaurant fare across the nation as large chains like McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), Wendy’s (NYSE: WEN), Dunkin Donuts and Taco Bell (NYSE: YUM) are reported to be working towards removing trans fats from their restaurants nationwide rather than face being accused of serving “unhealthy” products in some areas and “healthy” products in others. In the rush to ban trans fats, we may well be seeing another in a long history of health recommendations that end up being turned on their head after a few years.

Over the years we have heard “don’t use butter, use margarine,” until it became, “don’t use margarine, use butter.”

Recommendations for foods ranging from eggs to alcohol and everything in between have gone up and down with as much frequency and as much real scientific basis as women’s skirt lengths. A real potential problem with the ban on trans fats was pointed out by the American Heart Association in an article reported by the Associated Press.

In an unintended consequence from the rush to eliminate trans fats, restaurants and commercial food companies could just go back to the old stand-by saturated fats like palm oil rather than developing newer “healthier” alternatives. In a related unintended consequence to .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:MCD NYSE:WEN NYSE:YUM NYSE:XON NYSE:CVX NYSE:GM NYSE:F Wed, 12 May 2010 13:45:19 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=84Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Research/Stocks/Communications/Compu. Software/Service/Computer Hardware/Consumer Non-Durables/Specialty-Communications/Telecommunications/Telecommunications/
35 days, 18 hours… NEW YORK, December 4, 2006 – Wall Street Ideas.com –

Top industry executives at some big mobile communications device makers like Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Samsung, LG, Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM), Sanyo, Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY), Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) should be nervously marking 9:00AM PST January 9, 2007 down on their calendars. That is when Steve Jobs is rumored to be set to unveil Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) secrecy shrouded new iPhone during his keynote address at the 2007 Macworld conference in San Francisco.

The new phone(s), hints about which were unveiled in a recently released Apple patent filing, are expected by analysts to contain integrated email, text messaging, personal organizer, and cellular capability into an extremely compact device that will also include an iPod.

If this was just another new cellular phone with the ability to play some songs, browse the web and send email, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

The fact that it is by Apple, who has stolen the “make technology easy to use” crown from Sony and vaulted to a huge lead in portable media players with its iPod, makes the upcoming introduction of the iPhone a whole different type of product introduction. Remember when everyone with any pretensions to technology coolness had to have a Motorola StarTac?

If you don’t, just look at the current portable music player market, where there is the iPod, and a slew off also-rans.

Now combine the two, and throw in the off-chance that an iPhone with user friendly embedded email may also convert the “crackberry” addicts, and you can see why the makers of a whole range of portable devices have quite a bit to worry about. Among industry analysts, perhaps the biggest “show me” issue regarding the iPhone is not whether or not Apple will be able to deliver a great product that can do everything that the rumors suggest and still have the appeal .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:MOT Nasdaq:QCOM Nasdaq:ERICY NYSE:NOK Nasdaq:RIMM Nasdaq:AAPL Wed, 12 May 2010 13:44:29 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=291
GVSS) has “essentially completed the financial part of the turnaround” that began last year, with

a $15 million financing from Wells Fargo. The revolving credit agreement, which is at a straight interest rate of prime plus .75%, with no convertibles, warrants, options or resets, replaces the company’s prior credit line

which was terminated in connection with the new financing.

The new financing by one of the top financial institutions in the country signifies that the company has completed a remarkable financial turnaround and achieved a solid financial “platform for accelerated growth” in 2008. Click here for complete details.

.....(click here for full story)]]> OTCBB:GVSS Wed, 12 May 2010 13:37:31 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=292
GVSS) closed yesterday up 43.6% percent at $0.79 on volume of 808,000 shares - over 50 times average daily volume. The volume and price jump followed the joint announcement, earlier in the day, by GVI and Samsung Electronics of a marketing plan to facilitate North American expansion with sales a target of over $100 million by 2010. The stage for the rally in GVI shares was set Tuesday when the company announced a $15 million financing from Wells Fargo, the nation’s fifth largest bank, at a very favorable prime plus .75% with no convertible features, no warrants, and no resets.

GVI is an undiscovered value and growth opportunity moving forward on a remarkable financial turnaround which has seen their new management team take them from a loss of over $16 million in 2006 to three straight quarters of rising profit now totaling nearly $1 million net income in the first nine months of 2007. Click here for complete details.

.....(click here for full story)]]> OTCBB:GVSS Wed, 12 May 2010 13:37:54 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=80Economic Policy/Industry News/Internet Stocks/Market News/Stocks/Automotive/Capital Goods/Compu. Software/Service/Computer Hardware/Consumer Durables/Consumer Non-Durables/Electrical and Electronics/Financial/Banking/Economy/Personal Finance/Computers/Automobiles/Highways/Internet/Online/Government/
Supreme Court Hears Major Patent Case NEW YORK,

November 29, 2006 –



Wall Street Ideas.com – After having virtually abdicated oversight of federal patent legislation to the Federal U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for most of the past twenty years, the Supreme Court has begun to take a new approach and has recently taken up a number of appeals of Federal Circuit decisions.

In the first five cases that the Supreme Court has decided, the Court has reversed the Circuit Court decision every time – in each case limiting what the Court saw as overly broad patent rights. In the current case before the Supreme Court; KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., the Circuit Court had previously ruled that KSR International had violated a Teleflex , Inc., (NYSE: TFX)



patent on a movable pedal assembly that Teleflex had developed for Ford Motor Co’s., (NYSE: F) large F-350 pickup. In the appeal before the Supreme Court KSR International is asking the Court to overturn the Circuit Court on the grounds that the patent should not have been issued as the innovation it sought to protect was “obvious” and therefore not worthy of patent protection. This decision may have considerable impact not just on traditional durable goods manufacturing companies like Ford and General Motors (NYSE: GM) but also on technology, software, and internet companies like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) where significant patent disputes are brewing over a range of software and internet technologies that turn on the question of the patentability of “obvious” innovations. In the decision the Court will have to weigh not only the technical aspects of devising an understandable definition of obviousness, but also balance the competing requirements of patent law to both protect and encourage innovation, while at the same time preventing patents from being used as a cudgel to block further i .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:TFX NYSE:F NYSE:GM Nasdaq:MSFT Nasdaq:YHOO Nasdaq:EBAY Nasdaq:GOOG Wed, 12 May 2010 13:44:10 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=77Economic Policy/Economic Theory/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Stocks/Capital Goods/Electrical and Electronics/Financial/Retail/Banking/Economy/Personal Finance/
Much ink (and quite a bit of internet bandwidth) has been used to paint ominous pictures of plunging markets and receding economies, all due to a declining dollar.

The reality is quite a bit different. The fairly steady decline in the dollar over the past five months has been matched by a fairly steady increase in all major U.S. market indices.



Apparently, the markets know something that many pundits don’t:

a declining (but not plunging) dollar can be a positive for U.S. companies, markets, and the overall economy. U.S. companies ranging from industrial and financial giants like General Electric (NYSE: GE) and Citicorp (NYSE: C) to software behemoths like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and smaller companies with established foreign operations can see significant gains on currency translations from the foreign operations and subsidiaries.

U.S. dollar denominated exports, both goods and services, become more attractive to foreign buyers.

Even companies with purely domestic operations benefit from the surge in foreign tourism that has been fueled by the declining dollar. If all of the above is not sufficiently convincing, in comments made today at the Freidman Billings Ramsey conference in New York, former FED Chairman Alan Greenspan called the dollar decline a “non-issue” that was effectively “already priced into the markets.”

.....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:GE NYSE:C Nasdaq:MSFT Wed, 12 May 2010 13:36:22 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=72Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Apparel/Consumer Durables/Consumer Non-Durables/Financial/Property/ Real Estate and Development/Real Estate/Retail/Retail-General/Retail-Hardware/Retail/Marketing/Real Estate/
– Journalists, Wall Street analysts and the investing public were anxious to read the holiday shopping season tea leaves as Black Friday got off to a roaring start at retailers early Friday morning.

With left over turkey filling their refrigerators, so many eager shoppers headed off to “midnight madness” sales at Simon Property Group’s (NYSE: SPG)



Woodbury Commons Outlet Mall, that traffic for the overfilled parking lots backed up onto the New York State Thruway causing major delays into the early morning hours.

Huge early morning lines were also apparent at major electronics retailers like Circuit City (NYSE: CC) and Best Buy (NYSE: BYY), where over 500 people were already standing in the rain at 3:00 AM in front of one of their Brooklyn, New York locations waiting to grab bargains on flat panel TV’s and laptop computers at the stores 5:00 AM opening. Perhaps suffering from shopping overload, by Sunday the crowds had died down quite a bit at New York area retailers; with an unscientific survey of traffic at Home Depot (NYSE: HD), BJ’s (NYSE: BJ), Costco (Nasdaq: COST), Marshalls owned by The TJX

Companies (NYSE: TJX), Circuit City and Target (NYSE: TGT) indicating traffic levels comparable to or slightly below normal for a Sunday.

With the somewhat muddy tea leaves laid out for everyone’s enjoyment, the real Black Friday story is that the holiday shopping season won’t be made or broken until the last two weekends before Christmas.

Until then, the Black Friday results will mainly serve to frighten or comfort the sales executives at retailers who will have to balance their promotion and discount strategies for the rest of the shopping season. Let the countdown begin. .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:SPG NYSE:CC NYSE:BBY NYSE:HD NYSE:BJ Nasdaq:COST NYSE:TJX Wed, 12 May 2010 13:45:52 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=267
.....(click here for full story)]]> Wed, 12 May 2010 13:38:06 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=264Industry News/Aerospace and Defense/Aviation/Aerospace/Trade/Transportation/Construction/
If it wasn’t convenient enough to simultaneously remove jackets, empty pockets, open a case to turn on your laptop and hold up your pants after removing that offending metal belt buckle; for the past few years travelers have had to do all that while stooping to remove their footwear and then walk (in a highly dignified manner) barefoot or in their sock or stocking clad feet across the highly sanitary (of course, no germs allowed in airports) floor until they finally get through the screening process. Nowhere has the need to increase security while minimizing disruption been more pressing than in Israel where the threat from terrorism is a constant concern.

A host of successful technology companies with Israeli roots have been hard at work producing advanced technology solutions to improve security while minimizing inconvenience.

One of these companies, IDO Security Solutions Inc. (OTCBB: IDOI) has developed the MagShoe™ a high speed, shoes-on footwear weapons detector that can have a major impact at reducing the inconvenience of passing through security screening at airports and hundreds of thousands of other locations worldwide. IDO Security, which recently signed on with former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tom Ridge to help navigate the departments technology approval procedure (the MagShoe™ has already passed the stringent Israeli and British approval procedures) and speed MagShoe™ adoption in the huge US security market, is rapidly moving to expand their market presence after early success in placing units in Israel, Europe, Africa and Australia. Conventional walk through metal detectors are ineffective at detecting contraband at .....(click here for full story)]]> OTCBB:IDOI Wed, 12 May 2010 13:38:29 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=260 click here for full story)]]> Wed, 12 May 2010 13:57:46 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=221
NEW YORK, July 25, 2007 – LifeScienceStocks.com – Intermune (Nasdaq: ITMN) shares traded lower on Monday after a report by Leerink Swann & Co. analyst Howard Liang raised questions over delays in the start of the company’s Phase 1b trial for their hepatitis C protease inhibitor drug candidate ITMN-191.

Liang had speculated that delays in initiating the trial might be related to toxicity issues resulting in reduced dosages, involvement by Intermune development partner Roche in the trial design, or some combination of these or other factors. On Tuesday, Intermune responded with a press release announcing that they had submitted an amended Clinical Trial Authorization (CTA) with the relevant European regulatory authority completing the final steps before starting the delayed Phase 1b trial. The company identified “competitor data” as one of the factors that contributed to the amended CTA filing.

The data that the company may have considered includes reports of significant rash problems associated with competitor Vertex's telaprevir protease inhibitor also targeted against Hepatitis C.

In a recent interview Intermune’s CEO, Daniel Welch declined to speculate and left it to the clinical data to determine whether the rash problem was characteristic of the class of protease inhibitors or whether it was a problem specific to Vertex’s compound. Whether or not the rash problem turns out to be a class or compound specific issue, it is apparently impacting the clinical development program for ITMN-191.

The company clearly has had to take the issue into consideration with probable impact on dosing levels and potentially on effectiveness. Problems are nothing new at Intermune.

As we examined back in March: InterMune: Intermune: Off Label, Off Trial, Off Market?



Intermune has had a history of difficulties including fines for illegal promotion, and failed late stage trials.

In fact, Intermune recently .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:ITMN Wed, 12 May 2010 13:38:43 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=219


Just this past March, we wrote ( Drugs Could Dent Stent Sales ) about an important widely anticipated study that found that aggressive drug therapy was substantially equivalent to stents in the treatment of stable coronary artery disease.

Stents are small metal mesh tubes, sometimes coated with drugs, that interventional cardiologists insert through catheters to prop open clogged coronary arteries.

Stents have become a very big business for makers like Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX)



and Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ)



and any studies doubting the effectiveness of stents could have a significant impact on their revenue. We had predicted that patients would insist on drug therapy as an alternative to stents.

Comments by a Johnson & Johnson executive discussing sales results for J&J’s Cypher drug coated stent sold by their Cordis subsidiary, which were down by over 40% year-over-year, indicated that our prediction was rapidly coming true.

The J&J executive attributed a large part of the sales drop to a growing perception that “the devices were overused.”

Thirty years ago, results from medical clinical studies took years until they filtered down to changes in the actual care that patients received.

Now, it is becoming increasingly clear that medicine is beginning to be impacted by the Internet information revolution in the same manner that other industries, including the financial information industry have been.

Led by patients who are increasingly informed and increasingly willing to take responsibility for managing their own medical care, new developments backed up by clear clinical data are taking the decisions out of the hands of physicians and empowering patients with the knowledge to insist on receiving the best care possible. This will increasingly have a major impact not only on the physician .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:JNJ NYSEBSX: Wed, 12 May 2010 13:41:29 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=216
With the tech heavy Nasdaq QQQ (Nasdaq: QQQQ)

index hitting a multi-year high, a just released report from the Economist Intelligence Unit of The Economist Group, publishers of The Economist magazine shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The report ranked both the United States and Canada in the top ten of the world’s leading economies on the basis of their IT competitiveness.

The United States was ranked number one, and Canada came out in ninth place, behind Japan, South Korea, the UK, Australia, Taiwan, Sweden and Denmark.

Despite rampant reports of the impact of globalization and outsourcing, neither China nor India cracked the top ten as a result of factor’s ranging from inadequate infrastructure in India, to the absence of reliable independent regulatory and legal mechanisms in China. The Nasdaq QQQ, hit 49.56 after the close on Thursday, its highest level since May 2001 when the QQQ rebounded to 50.15 on a rebound from its plunge following an all time end of day high close of 115.67 on March 27, 2000.

From a technical standpoint, if the QQQ can break the 50.15 close, it will have made a major breakthrough and should have clear sailing to continue to levels not seen since the internet bubble days. The competitiveness of the US and Canadian IT industries has a lot to do with the resurgent Nasdaq.

Recent reports suggest that the outsourcing of high tech jobs to India is slowing, and even being reversed as salaries for highly skilled high tech workers approaches North American levels.

When companies could save 75% on salaries, the inconvenience of lengthy travel times and difficulty communicating with colleagues in a time zone 14 hours away were acceptable.

With salary savings dropping to as little as 10% the inconvenience of conference calls at 2:00 a.m. no longer seems worth the effort to busy tech executives. Outsourcing is still str .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:QQQQ Wed, 12 May 2010 13:43:57 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=215
RNAi, the discovery of which formed the basis for the award of last year’s Nobel Prize in medicine, is one of the hottest areas in drug research.

The technology works by turning on and off individual genes that may have major impact in a number of diseases and disease processes.

When we wrote about the Sirna deal

(Sirna Showstopper), we highlighted Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ALNY)

as another RNAi company with potential as an acquisition or partnering target for another of the big pharma companies. On Monday, Roche Holdings AG and Alnylam jointly announced a partnering agreement worth $1 billion or more to Alnylam.

Alnylam’s shares moved up to $23.42 at the close Monday, up $7.92 (and up $6.75 from its close at $16.67 on October 30, 2006). The deal will provide Alnylam with an upfront cash payment of $331 million in addition to an equity investment of an additional $42.5 million. Alnylam’s Chief Executive John Maraganore hinted that the deal could be worth far more than $1 Billion, stating that if everything in the agreement went well, the value could, “vastly exceed $1 billion.”

The deal is a non-exclusive licensing arrangement and allows Alnylam to enter additional deals with other companies.

Alnylam has previously announced deals with Biogen Idec, Novartis, and Medtronic. Roche wasn’t the only big pharma company to go RNAi shopping this week.

AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN)

signed a $400 million deal with tiny United Kingdom based Silence Therapeutics for a three year research pact to develop five programs using Silence Therapeutics’ technology to develop drug candidates. With all the excitemen .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:AZN Nasdaq:ALNY NYSE:MRK Wed, 12 May 2010 13:41:43 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=211Active Trading/Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Communications/Telecommunications/Computers/Telecommunications/
Back on December 4, 2006 with Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) shares trading at $91.12, we wrote (The Brave New Mobile World Countdown: 35 days, 18 hours) about the upcoming introduction of Apple’s

iPhone suggesting that investors would be wishing a year later that they “had purchased more Apple shares back when they were going for less than $100 a share in December 2006.”

It is well under a year (and with Apple shares trading at over $131 as this is being written) investors are already wishing that they had purchased Apple shares at under $100. Many of the early questions about the iPhone have already been answered.

Apple has delivered a device with stunning battery life, ruggedness, and the type of robust, reliable user interface that have made Apple products so appealing.

The one drawback in the current implementation is the fact that the iPhone has been relegated to using ATT’s older, slower wireless data platform while the company continues the nationwide rollout of their latest high speed wireless data infrastructure.

The slower network speeds have not seemed to dampen sales, as customers have reported backlogs in activating their phones at Apple’s iTunes store. That brings up another strong point in Apple’s favor:

For the first time, a handset manufacturer has managed to wrest control over the customer from the wireless service provider.

ATT may be providing the wireless network, but it is Apple that is controlling the customer relationship.

That gives Apple the upper hand and puts Apple into an entirely different class from other cell phone makers including like Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Samsung, LG, Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM), Sanyo, Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY) and

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) .

Controlling the end user relationship gives Apple enormous power to sell add on services, and potentially transforms the wireless carrier fr .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:AAPL NYSE:MOT Nasdaq:QCOM Nasdaq:ERICY NYSE:NOK NYSE:S NYSE:VZ Wed, 12 May 2010 13:30:59 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=208
Clearly, CCTV cameras alone won’t stop a determined armed assailant, but what they can do is provide real time information that can drive rapid response to quickly stop or prevent a tragedy.

One of the clear lessons of the Virginia Tech shootings was that the absence of an integrated real-time video security surveillance solution makes it extremely difficult for police to localize a threat and respond effectively on a school campus. The value of CCTV video surveillance is coming to the fore as the result of monitoring technology that gives real time capability to use the video streams as a tool to drive a rapid security response.

In the past, video only served to “memorialize” an event – it provided a record that could be reviewed hours or days later, but did not provide the kind of real time information in a useable format that could immediately enhance safety or security.

The technology that these companies are deploying changes that, with effective real time monitoring systems that can make a real difference. There are a number of interesting similarities between the two companies, and also a few differences.

MDI has partnered with a large company, Nortel Networks, which will be act .....(click here for full story)]]> OTCBB:GVSS Nasdaq:MDII Wed, 12 May 2010 13:35:21 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=205Market News/Biotechnology/Pharmaceuticals/
It is becoming increasingly clear, both in the clinical research laboratory, and in the physicians office, that patients respond differentially to medications and that the future of medicine lies in developing and utilizing genetic tests that can pinpoint which medications will be most effective in particular patients without the need to go through a costly and potentially dangerous trial and error process in each patient.

This clearly benefits the patient, but it also has real benefits for doctors, insurers and for drug companies looking to expand markets for existing drugs as well as those developing new drugs. Expanding markets for existing drugs is one of the major driving forces behind Roche Holdings AG $3 Billion (US) offer after the close on Monday, June 25th for Ventana Medical Systems (Nasdaq: VMST).

The offer came at a 44% premium to Monday’s closing price.

Roche is the majority shareholder in Genentech, maker of Herceptin, a breast cancer medication that is most effective in women whose tumors over-express the HER-2 protein.

Ventana makes a test that can easily pinpoint tumors that over-express HER-2.

Pairing a drug with a treatment that pinpoints exactly those patients who will benefit from the drug give Roche and Genentech a huge advantage in the marketplace, both with physicians and with insurers.

This is not Roche’s first step into the personalized medical testing field.

Just last week Roche announced a $272.5 Million agreement to acquire privately held DNA micro-array maker Nimble-Gen.

Earlier in the year, Roche announced a $600 Million agreement to buy BioVeneris

(Nasdaq: BIOV)

and recently completed the $155 million acquisition of 454 Life Sciences Corp. Investing $4 B .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:VMST Nasdaq:BIOV Wed, 12 May 2010 13:45:04 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=201
The investor can get in at an early stage, where the company’s prospects are uncertain, put the potential for reward can be very great.

When we evaluate early stage public biotech company’s we look at the company’s “genes” for factors that differentiate the company from the pack of also-rans. Some of the factors that we look for include large potential markets that can generate impressive revenue streams and justify high valuations; valid science; an established pathway to marketing approval and a management team with a proven ability to deliver.

Understandably, it is a very rare occurrence when we find an early stage company where many of these factors are present.

One newly public company that has recently caught our attention based on an extremely strong showing on our evaluation is Modigene (OTCBB:

MODG).

Today we will examine some of the factors that set Modigene apart. The first factor is the science; Modigene is developing a technology that can answer one of the main drawbacks of biotech medications.

Biotech proteins are administered exclusively by injection and have relatively short time frames where the concentration of the drug in the bloodstream was at proper therapeutic levels to effectively treat the conditions that they were targeted at.

This obvious drawback means that patients require very frequent injections and initial doses much higher than the therapeutic level in order to get longer-lasting therapeutic doses.

For insurers, it means paying for many visits to hospitals for expensive injection and infusion procedures that could end up doubling the cost of already expensive medications. Modigene’s technology, licensed from Washington University provides a simple but ingenious method .....(click here for full story)]]> OTCBB:MODG NYSE:SGP Nasdaq:TEVA Wed, 12 May 2010 13:39:49 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=195Market News/Market Opinion/Stocks/Defense/Trade/Transportation/Automobiles/Highways/Travel/Airlines/Safety/Security/
In the Spring of 2003, with Taser trading at under $1.00 (split adjusted) we suggested it as an interesting buy for investors at HomelandSecurityStocks.com.

After a meteoric one year rise, in

the Spring of 2004, with Taser just off its all time high, we wrote that the shares had become overvalued and that even in the extremely unlikely chance that the company sold a Taser to every policeman in America, they would still not be able to achieve sufficient sales to justify their valuation. Now, it looks like some are suggesting a strong possibility that Taser will be able to sell a Taser to, if not every policeman in America, that at least every policeman in France.

Two hundred and fifty four thousand of them to be precise, potentially generating sales of $300 million which would be quite a jump from their current annual sales of approximately $88 million. At this point, the perception of the possibility of sharply increased sales is more important to the short term prospects of the shares than the eventual realization of those sales.

Therefore, we would look to a continued near term run up in the share price to the $20 range.

Beyond that, we have to look at the basis for the increased sales expectations from analysts like Eric Wold, at Merriman Curhan Ford who was reported on June 11, 2007 to not only have calculated out the potential sales impact of a sale to every policeman in France, but also said that the company had heard Sarkozy planned on purchasing 100,000 Tasers near-term, which equals $120 .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:TASR Wed, 12 May 2010 13:41:15 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=193Industry News/Market News/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
In many respects, the current state of Alzheimer’s research and development mirrors that of cancer research 40 years ago; a growing patient population with grim prognoses, intriguing theories, and a dearth of effective treatments.

One major difference is that the life science biotech revolution has provided the funding availability to enable many more companies to launch independently funded development work on Alzheimer’s therapeutics than was seen in Cancer 40 years ago. The Alzheimer’s patient population is expected to grow substantially over the next 40 years according to a study funded by Elan Pharmaceuticals

and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

(NYSE: WYE)

and released at the conference on June 11th.

The study, conducted at Johns Hopkins, estimated the current worldwide patient population at 26 million and projected a fourfold increase to over 100 million patients by 2050, with a North American patient population of approximately 8.8 million patients.

This contrasts with some other recent studies that projected sharply higher estimates, including numbers that suggested United States Alzheimer’s patient numbers exceeding 16 million in 2050.

In either case, the number of patients and the cost of their care is expected to be staggering, further fueling the drive to develop treatments that can prevent, or at least halt the progression of the disease. A couple of small companies made news at the conference with data that showed promise of reducing the mental deterioration that makes Alzheimer’s such a nightmare for patients and their caregivers.

Medivation

(Nasdaq: MDVN) .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:WYE Nasdaq:MDVN Nasdaq:NRMX NYSE:ELN Wed, 12 May 2010 13:30:27 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=187Industry News/Market News/Biotechnology/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
Virtually every report and analysis of the meeting lauded Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) for their exciting new kidney cancer drug Sutent, and blasted Onyx (Nasdaq: ONXX) over their “failed” Nexavar cancer drug trial. Virtually every report declared Sutent to be the upcoming drug of choice for kidney cancer therapy and wrote off Onyx’s chances in the market.

Naturally, Onyx’s shares plunged at that point.

A lone voice stood out and made a case for buying Onyx shares.

That voice was LifeScienceStocks.com.

On June 6, 2006, due to other opportunities we saw for Nexavar, we wrote that the reports from ASCO might be an “opportunity to do some bargain hunting,” in Onyx “for an investor willing to take a slightly contrarian viewpoint and go against the herd.”

Onyx shares are currently trading at $30.50 up from $16.82 when we wrote the recommendation before the opening on June 6, 2006.

Clearly, Onyx has been a spectacular success for investors who went bargain hunting last year.

With Onyx scheduled to release data from their recent trial of Nexavar on liver cancer, (which was halted on compassionate grounds due to clear survival advantages for patients receiving Nexavar so that the patients receiving placebo could be switched over to Nexavar) we expect to see great data.

However, we retain our slightly contrarian position and would take profits and cut back Onyx holdings by 50% going into ASCO.

Following any retrenchment in pricing, we would reevaluate adding to Onyx holdings. Click for the June 6 2006 article:

ASCO Conference Anoints New Kidney Cancer Therapy Winners - .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:PFE Nasdaq:ONXX Wed, 12 May 2010 13:34:20 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=185Active Trading/Industry News/Market News/Stocks/Biotechnology/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
BIVN)

today agreed to be acquired by Genzyme (Nasdaq: GENZ) for $345 million in cash or $5.60 per share.

Genzyme was partnered with Bioenvision on their main product, Clofarabine, which is currently marketed for the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in relapsed and refractory pediatric patients.

While this is a relatively small market, Genzyme is currently seeking to develop clofarabine for much larger market opportunities including use as a first line therapy for adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Genzyme wasn’t an original partner to the clofarabine development agreement, but came into the partnership through their 2004 acquisition of Bionevision’s then licensee ILEX Oncology Inc.

This deal represents Genzyme’s serial two part acquisition of the rights to this product spread out over a three year timeframe. For investor’s in small biotechs, the extent to which small innovative companies continue to produce products and product candidates of interest to acquisition hungry companies is definitely a positive. What is particularly interesting is the 10-day run-up in Bioenvision shares preceding the announcement of the tender offer.

The shares had been trading as low as $3.25 before moving up steadily on increasing volume to Friday’s close of $5.25 over the ten trading days preceding the announcement.

On the Thursday and Friday heading into the long US Memorial Day weekend, the shares were particularly active, trading 2.7 and 5.1 million shares, respectively, far above the three hundred to four hundred thousand shares volume, which had been a typical trading volume level for the shares. While Genzyme clearly saw an opportunity to acquire the balance of the rights to an approved product with potential for additional marketing approvals in much larger patient populations, the trading action leading .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:BIVN Nasdaq:GENZ Wed, 12 May 2010 13:37:11 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=182Industry News/Stocks/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Medical and Health Related Services/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
(NYSE: GSK) widely prescribed diabetes medication Avandia.

The paper, which analyzed a string of studies that pitted Avandia against placebo or competing oral diabetes medications found that Avandia was associated with a 43% increase in myocardial infarction (heart attack). That was a shocking finding for such a widely prescribed drug, particularly for one that had been prescribed for such a widespread, chronic condition. The emerging risks of Avandia highlight some basic deficiencies in the current drug approval process.

The first was in the design of studies, and the acceptance of “surrogate endpoints” in demonstrating safety and efficacy.

With type 2 diabetes, the body loses the ability to effectively regulate blood glucose levels which then cause macro and micro vascular injuries contributing to a host of problems including heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, retinal damage, diabetic ulcers, etc.

In approving diabetic therapeutic agents, the regulatory bodies in the United States, Europe and Asia have been accepting a surrogate endpoint of improved glycemic control, rather than pushing for demonstrated efficacy in actually reducing heart attack, stroke or other measurable parameters. Surrogate endpoints, particularly in chronic diseases, can contribute to a situation where drugs are approved that are a major success at increasing or reducing some parameter thought to be important in a disease, but are a complete failure at providing any real health benefits for the patient.

Surrogate endpoints may well be creating the pharmaceutical equivalent of the old surgical joke that “the operation was a success but the patient died.” In the case of Avandia, the results also raise the issue of the continuing difficulties that have arisen with th .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:GSK NYSE:MRK NYSE:PFE NYSE:BMS Wed, 12 May 2010 13:40:33 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=181Economic Policy/Real Estate/Taxes/Real Estate/Transportation/Trade/Transportation/Forest Products/Real Estate/Oil/Gas/
In California, the government policy that allows single occupant “green” high mileage ultra-low-emissions hybrid vehicles access into multi-occupant only express lanes is having a significant impact in increasing the market value of vehicles, like the Toyota (NYSE: TM) Prius that absent government incentives had a much lower value. The question for investors is how further government policy will impact industry as government regulation aimed at reducing carbon emissions create a financial impact that can exceed and indeed transform financial returns from basic economic considerations.

With home building a major economic engine in much of the United States, how will global warming play out?

A reasonable argument can be made that government incentives to sequester carbon could have a beneficial impact on the home building industry in general and the forest products industry in particular.

Trees, after all, are excellent atmospheric carbon sequestration devices.

They take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, removing the heat trapping gas from the environment, and potentially cooling the globe.

The downside is that all those trees out in the forest will eventually burn in a forest fire, or rot and decompose, returning all that nasty carbon into the eco system where it could enter the atmosphere and start raising global temperatures. Faced with all those trees, what is a good environmentalist to do?

Obviously, start cutting them down and “sequester” the carbon in millions of nice new wood homes.

Of course, the home builders like Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL) and buyers would need to be incentivized with credits or tax wri .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:TM NYSE:TOL NYSE:WY Wed, 12 May 2010 13:37:23 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=177Industry News/Stocks/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
WallStreetIdeas.com

– For over a hundred years, scientists have been seeking to harness the immune system in the battle against cancer.

During that time, the immunological approach has produced some intermittent leads, but no approved therapies.

Many observers had thought that was about to change, with recent applications to the FDA by Dendreon (Nasdaq: DNDN) for approval of an immunological treatment for prostate cancer and by IDM Pharma (Nasdaq: IDMI) for approval of an immunological treatment for osteosarcoma.

Both of the companies had come to the FDA with extensive phase III trials that demonstrated safety and efficacy for their products. The result?

The FDA rejected both products, despite the data that the companies presented.

In Dendreon’s case, the FDA advisory panel first voted to grant marketing approval before being overruled by the FDA.

For IDM, the rejection came directly from the advisory panel which found insufficient proof of effectiveness because the statistical certainty that the company presented was 94% vs. the 95% that the FDA standards called for.

This was for a drug designed to treat a patient population of only 900 pediatric cases per year.

With such a small market, it is highly uncertain whether further trials would be financially possible or advisable for IDM.

The FDA may have permanently killed the development of this product, but did they also kill the development of other immunological approaches to cancer? The demonstrated institutional hostility of the FDA to immunological therapies for cancer raises a real red flag for companies developing these therapies. Without a pathway to approval, it doesn’t make sense for a company or an investor to allocate capital that will be used to develop immunological therapies.

Traditional “toxic” chemical based therapies, whether delivered as small molecules .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:DNDN Nasdaq:IDMI Wed, 12 May 2010 13:36:44 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=306 click here for full story)]]> Wed, 12 May 2010 13:29:06 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=173
Emerging Regional Trends in the Science and Business of BioTech BOSTON,

LifeScienceStocks.com –

The BIO International Convention taking place this week in Boston is a huge meeting of industry representatives from around the world.

Over a hundred countries from across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific had representation at national and company sponsored booths.

Striking similarities are evident in the desire of nations across the globe to accelerate their participation in the biotech revolution.

Companies from every corner of the globe are actively engaged in discovery and development of new compounds for the treatment of cancer, diabetes, neuro-degenerative and cardio-vascular diseases.

An additional range of companies are competing to provide the full range of outsourced services including clinical testing, discovery and production. Clear differences begin to emerge and are largely driven by a clear delineation that exists in sources of capital in the United States versus the rest of the world.

Speaking to representatives from a broad range of countries, from the leading industrialized nations like Canada, Great Britain, France and Germany, to countries with developing economies like China and Malaysia, they all explain the differences in their funding and approaches to product development and research by contrasting their financial choices and constraints with their perception of the ready availability of capital to the US Biotech industry. Companies in Canada describe a very early need to become publicly listed to raise capital that in the United States would be readily provided by venture capital.

This tends to create a great many small and relatively weak companies that feel a lot of pressure from investors and lack the resources to strongly drive their growth.

In Taiwan, the lack of venture capital manifests in a different manner.

The .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:AMGN Nasdaq:GENE Wed, 12 May 2010 13:34:46 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=169
In an op-ed piece published last week in the Wall Street Journal, James C. Mullen, Chairman of the Biotech Industry Organization and President and CEO of Biogen Idec (Nasdaq: BIIB)

laid out his view that legislative initiatives under consideration by the United States Congress represented significant threats to the continued health and success of the biotech industry. The central danger from these threats are that they could reduce the financial rewards to the industry, and by reducing the incentives also reduce the investment in developing new drugs that have helped so many patients since the biotech industry began. The enormous amounts of capital that have made the biotech revolution possible have been drawn to the biotech arena by the equally enormous rewards that successful drug development and marketing have delivered.

Mullen makes a simple case:

Reduce the rewards and you will reduce the capital available to the biotech industry; reduce the capital and you reduce drug development; reduce development and patients who could have been saved will suffer and die. He laid out three main areas of concern that are likely to be a topic of discussion at the industry’s biggest annual gathering, the BIO International Convention, next week in Boston.

The first was the possible impact of proposed legislation to roll back accelerated FDA drug approval procedures in the wake of recent incidents where drugs were pulled from the market after unexpected adverse events began to appear. Mullen pointed out that drug marketing approval withdrawals had remained at similar levels both before and after the legislation to speed drug approvals and that slowing down the process would only delay the introduction of drugs that help millions of patients without providing any increase in safety. The second area of concern is legislation that could allow the Medicare program .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:BIIB Wed, 12 May 2010 13:42:45 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=158Industry News/Stocks/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
(OTCBB: VQPH) a little known US based bio-pharmaceutical company that was founded in 2000 and went public in 2003 is taking an interesting approach to achieve rapid regulatory approval to bring their first product to market.

They started by minimizing risk and uncertainty through the acquisition of rights to a compound with a well-understood mechanism of action and a well-documented body of data demonstrating safe human administration to rapidly move the compound past the Phase II and Phase III trials where drug candidates so often disappoint. They also picked a compound with a large potential market that targets a disease of concern to an important organization in the US government.

The compound, Lenocta is being developed to treat leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease transmitted by sand flea bites.

The disease is a danger to humans in many areas of the world of concern to the United States military including Asia and the Middle East as well as other parts of the world where tropical and sub-tropical climate conditions exist.

In its presentations, VioQuest has projected a potential $500 million world wide market for the drug and is developing the drug in collaboration with the US Army who has expressed interest in using Lenocta to treat soldiers infected with the disease. VioQuest has already received orphan drug approval for Lenocta, and has completed a pre-NDA filing conference with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in preparation for an expected NDA filing later this year.

The company also reported that Lenocta has potential as a cancer treatment and “has been show to be effective in breast, prostate, multiple myeloma, malignant melanoma, bladder, and colon cancer cell lines.” While effectiveness in cell lines is a long way from achieving additional approved indications, the company is currently pursuing these .....(click here for full story)]]> OTCBB:VQPH Wed, 12 May 2010 13:42:21 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=156Economic Theory/Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Stocks/Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
Vaccinations for diseases like Polio and Smallpox have virtually eliminated scourges that have devastated the lives of millions throughout history.

Vaccines have also provided a low cost, extremely safe means of largely eliminating measles, mumps, rubella, typhus, whooping cough and tetanus for much of the world.

Vaccines for these diseases, as well as many others have been exemplars of the vaccine paradigm: creating an immune system response that provides safe and effective protection, with minimal risk and cost, from infection by a virus or bacteria that directly causes a disease.

In 2006 Merck & Co., (NYSE: MRK) brought out Gardasil, a new vaccine that challenges many of the pillars of the paradigm that have made vaccines so widely accepted.

Merck is marketing Gardasil as a breakthrough vaccine against Cervical cancer.

The vaccine is priced at $360 US for a three shot course of treatment spread out over three separate doctor visits with their attendant additional fees for administration.

At this point, the vaccine has been recommended for administration to females as young as 11 years old.

In fact, Merck has generated considerable controversy over its aggressive lobbying effort to make the vaccine mandatory for all 11-year-old females across the United States. Aside from the moral and religious objections to vaccinating pre-adolescents against sexually transmitted infections, additional controversy has come from the high cost and questionable effectiveness of the vaccine. Some background on the vaccine and the disease is needed to put the controversy into perspective.

Cervical cancer is a relatively rare disease that represents less than 1% of cancer diagnoses in women each year.

It is also a disease that for which a highly effective preventative procedure already exists: a regular gyne .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:GSK NYSE:MRK Wed, 12 May 2010 13:30:02 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=140Industry News/Stocks/Communications/Computer Hardware/Computers/Telecommunications/
TechnologyGrowthStocks.com –

A lot of analyst attention over the years has focused on the makers of high profile DDR2 RAM system memory for laptop and desktop computers.

This is the high profile, high cost computer memory that currently retails for approximately $65 for a 512mb upgrade.

DDR memory pioneered by Rambus (Nasdaq: RMBS) forms the backbone of most systems processing memory.

For data storage, computers and most large capacity portable media players like the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)

iPods use hard drives.

The major disadvantage of hard drives have been power usage, cost and, to the dread of many users, their susceptibility to “crashing.” Despite the downside, hard drives have been the mainstream choice for high capacity storage solutions and a significant product for makers like Toshiba (OTCPK:

TOSBF).





and Western Digital (NYSE: WDC).

The major alternative to hard drives is flash memory, which up until now has been far too expensive to replace hard drives.

Now, that is changing in a major way as prices at retail for flash memory cards from makers like Sandisk (Nasdaq: SNDK)

and Kingston

have dropped as low as $5/gb after rebates. That could put 100gb of flash memory, enough to replace a 100gb hard drive into a laptop for under $500 retail.

That creates a whole new paradigm for lightweight, crash proof portable devices.

The new memory paradigm is already being felt in portable devices like the iPod.

The first generation iPod’s came with 5gb or 10gb hard drives.

The current iPod nano models with comparable storage capacity to the first generation models use flash memory resulting in a far smaller, lighter form factor and a lower price. In addition to

iPod’s, the impact of dropping flash memory prices is also making an impact on the cell phone industry .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:RMBS Nasdaq:AAPL OTCPK:TOSBF NYSE:WDC Nasdaq:SNDK NYSE:MOT NYSE:SNE Nasdaq:DELL NYSE:HP NYSE:IBM NYSE:QI Nasdaq:MXIC Wed, 12 May 2010 13:40:20 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=138Industry News/Market News/Stocks/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
LifeScienceStocks.com

– Twenty-three years after the United States Congress voted in 1984 to allow the approval of “generic” versions of brand name prescription drugs, Congress is now taking up the issue of approving generic copies of the bio-engineered brand name proteins that have generated billions of dollars in sales for industry leaders like Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN)

and Genentech (NYSE: DNA). The biotech industry is making many of the same arguments against generics that the pharmaceutical industry tried in their losing battle against congressional approval for generics.

The biotech industry’s first (and perhaps weakest) argument is that approval of generics will destroy the industry by eliminating the financial incentive for innovation that drove the development of biotech drugs.

Even a causal glance at a stock price chart for any of the major pharmaceutical industry players like Johnson & Johnson

(NYSE: JNJ), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)

or Merck

(NYSE: MRK)

who made the same type of arguments in 1984, will show that the industry managed to prosper quite nicely despite generics.

There is no reason to expect anything different for the biotech industry. Another biotech industry argument, and one on which the industry is on firmer ground, is that there is a qualitative difference between the complex proteins that make up biotech drugs and the simple “small-molecule” pharmaceutical industry drugs that makes approval of bio-generics a totally different issue that is not comparable to pharmaceutical generics. Individual drugs are approved after exhaustive human trials that demonstrate safety and efficacy to the satisfaction of the regulatory authorities.

In the United States the regulatory authority is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Based on the assumption that generics are chemically identical in composition and effect to the ori .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:AMGN NYSE:DNA NYSE:JNJ NYSE:PFE NYSE:MRK Wed, 12 May 2010 13:34:30 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=142Active Trading/Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Stocks/Biotechnology/Medical and Health Related Services/Medical Instruments and Equipment/Medical/ click here for full story)]]> OTCBB:EGEI Wed, 12 May 2010 13:39:39 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=132Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Medical and Health Related Services/Medical Instruments and Equipment/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Biotechnology/
Half Billion Dollars a Year? NEW YORK, Life Science Stocks – April 3, 2007 – Last Friday, Novartis (NYSE: NVS) announced that they were complying with a request from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to suspend sales and marketing of Zelnorm in the US market.

Zelnorm was first approved by the FDA in 2002 as a drug to treat Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) primarily in women. Prior to the notoriety it is now gaining from the FDA request, Zelnorm was most widely known for its Direct to Consumer (DTC) ad campaign that showed the bare bellies of attractive women with words written on them. The FDA request came as a result of a review of clinical data that showed a statistically significant increase in adverse cardiovascular events including heart attack, angina and stroke for patients taking Zelnorm.

The incidence of these events was over 1:1000 for patients taking Zelnorm as opposed to less than 1:7000 for patients on placebo.

In the announcement, Novartis defended the drug by writing that the adverse events experienced by the patients “corresponds approximately with the expected rates for such events in the general population,” and in an apparent prelude to seeking renewed marketing approval: “We believe that Zelnorm provides important benefits for appropriate patients." When writing or speaking about Zelnorm, the phrase “corresponds approximately with the expected rates,” takes on a whole new meaning when you go back and look at the efficacy data that was originally submitted when the drug was first approved.

In three studies, after twelve weeks of treatment, the response profile showed very little difference between the effectiveness of Zelnorm and that of a placebo.

In the three studies, placebo was effective in approximately 50 to 60 percent of patients, with Zelnorm showing positive results in about 65 percent of patients.

The response rate changes over time for Zelnorm .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:NVS Wed, 12 May 2010 13:38:16 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=129Industry News/Insurance/Market Commentary/Market News/Stocks/Biotechnology/Diagnostic Services/Healthcare/Hospitals and Health Care/Insurance/Medical and Health Related Services/Medical Instruments and Equipment/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Insurance/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
The “Courage” study, whose results showed no survival benefits for the stents, as well as surprisingly similar results for the two groups when pain reduction was considered, contributed to a sharp decline for the shares of Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX), a large maker of stents. Prior to the release of the study, many observers had expected the results and stressed that the major advantage of stent implantation in stable patients was the immediate and sharp relief in pain that they afforded patients.

What came as a surprise in the study results was the ability of drug therapy to deliver significant pain relief for patients.

After one year 66% of patients receiving stents were reported to be pain free vs. 58% of drug therapy patients.

The results were somewhat distorted in favor of drug therapy by patient crossover from the drug therapy arm to the stent arm of the study, however the ability of drug therapy to reduce pain was still considered to be highly significant. Some of the winners as a result of the study may turn out to be the pharmaceutical industry giants like Pfizer (NYSE: PFE),

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK), Merck (NYSE: MRK), BristolMyers (NYSE: BMY),

Sanofi-Aventis

(NYSE: SNY)

and Novartis

(NYSE: NVS) who receive a significant portion of their revenue from

the types of cholesterol, blood pressure and blood thinning medications used to treat the patients in this study. The biggest loser may very well turn out to be the interventional cardiologists who have made a specialty of stent implantation.

Before the development of stents,

cardiologists had been losing large amounts of income to cardiac surgeons whose bypas .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:BSX NYSE:JNJ NYSE:PFE NYSE:GSK NYSE:MRK NYSE:BMY NYSE:SNY NYSE:NVS Wed, 12 May 2010 13:36:32 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=128Market News/Research/Stocks/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Hospitals and Health Care/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/


AtheroGenics reported that their first-in-class vascular protectant AGI-1067, which was designed to attack atherosclerosis by reducing inflammation directly at the arterial linings, had failed to meet its primary endpoint in a large Phase III trial.



The company did report some preliminary encouraging data that indicated that the study had met predefined secondary endpoints in overall reduction in cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke as well as improvements in some diabetes management parameters. Up until now, the big gun in the fight against artherosclerosis have been the anti-cholesterol medications like Pfizer’s (NYSE: PFE) Lipitor and Merck’s (NYSE: MRK) Zetia which have an indirect effect of reducing fatty buildups in the arteries without attacking the underlying inflammation that promotes the build up of the plaques.



Vascular protectants seek to attack the inflammatory process and block the formation of the plaques, instead of just trying to slow their growth. It is an entirely new way of attacking arterial disease.

Comparing clogged arteries to a clogged drainpipe, statins work by reducing the amount of grease being poured down the line, while the new class of vascular protectants seeks to transform the lining of the pipe so that the fatty deposits won't be able to adhere and clog the line at all. It is an intriguing method of attacking a disease that represents a significant percentage of all health related spending in North America.



An effective, approved drug in this new class would most likely achieve blockbuster status (annual sales in excess of US $1 billion) in short order. Unfor .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:AGIX NYSE:AZN NYSE:PFE NYSE:MRK Wed, 12 May 2010 13:40:05 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=126Industry News/Biotechnology/Food/Healthcare/Medical and Health Related Services/Pharmaceuticals/Food/Agriculture/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/
Lawyers in America dream of filing class action suit after class action suit against the sellers of every high calorie, high fat food from McDonalds (NYSE: MCD) Quarter Pounders to KrispyKreme Donuts (NYSE: KKD).

Doctors lower their recommendations on weight and cholesterol every year.

Newspapers, television shows and commentators by the score constantly bemoan the “obesity epidemic.”

The pursuit of effective weight loss medications is keeping a large number of pharmaceutical and biotech firms including

Amylin Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: AMLN), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE),

Arena Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ARNA), GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK), and Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) very busy Into this weight debate comes the findings of a study published this week in the American Medical Association’s Archive of Internal Medicine.

The study, which tracked over 46,000 male health professionals found a clear relationship between body mass index and suicide.

There was a highly significant difference in suicide rates between the “thin” men with the a body mass index (BMI) of less than 21 and the “fat” men with

a BMI of

over 30.

To put this in perspective, a 6 foot (183 cm) male weighing 150 pounds (68 kg) has a BMI of 20.3 and a 6 foot (183 cm) 225 pound (102 kg) male has a BMI of 30.

The thin men had a 400% greater risk of death from suicide. The researchers were at a loss to explain the difference.

Clearly excess weight carries risks ranging from heart disease to diabetes.

Apparently, it also conveys certain benefits along with the risks.

Perhaps this is one of the rare times when cultural stereotypes like the Fat Jolly Santa and the Skinny Bitter Scrooge illustrate a deeper truth backed up with a definitive medical study As the “thin is in” crusade builds, it clearly .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:MCD NYSE:KKD Nasdaq:AMLN NYSE:PFE Nasdaq:ARNA NYSE:GSK Nasdaq:AMGN Wed, 12 May 2010 13:26:23 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=123
Off Label, Off Trial, Off Market? NEW YORK, March 7, 2007 – Life Science Stocks – Intermune (Nasdaq: ITMN) shares were trading down only about twenty percent in midday trading on Tuesday following the company’s announcement after the close on Monday that their Phase III trial of Actimmune for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) had to be halted early after producing no indication that the drug was effective. The interim data review that prompted the halting of the trial showed that 12.7% of the patients in the placebo arm of the trial had died, as compared to 14.5% of the patients receiving Actimmune.

While the higher death rate of patients receiving Actimmune was not deemed to be statistically significant, the results nevertheless clearly showed no benefit to patients from taking Actimmune. The Actimmune trial failure is but another chapter in Intermune’s checkered history.

Actimmune originally received FDA approval for the treatment of two extremely rare conditions: severe malignant osteopetrosis and chronic granulomatous disease.

Combined, the two diseases are only believed to affect approximately 800 patients in the United States.

In SEC filings, Intermune had estimated that if every one of the 800 patients were to take Actimmune, the peak annual sales potential of the drug would be approximately $20 million.

Despite that, the company actually achieved peak annual sales of over $140 million in 2003.

The actions the company took to achieve that level of sales resulted in State and Federal investigations, fines, a consent decree and a two year deferred prosecution agreement. Under previous management, the company had crossed a major red line with the FDA; they actively promoted Actimmune for an “off label” use.

Physicians can, for the most part, legally prescribe any approved drug to any patient for any purpose; however drug companies are only allowed to promote the use of their drugs .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:ITMN Wed, 12 May 2010 13:38:57 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=120Industry News/Investment Education/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Stocks/Biotechnology/Hospitals and Health Care/Medical and Health Related Services/Medical Instruments and Equipment/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
- WallStreetIdeas.com - Anyone who follows the pharmaceutical and biotech industries has seen hundreds of similar press releases over the years; releases that describe a drug that “failed to meet its primary endpoint” in its Phase III trial, after years of highly promising and encouraging pre-clinical and clinical Phase I and II trials. It has been a matter of speculation over the years among industry watchers as to why this has so often been the case.

The drug development pathway that leads up to the pivotal Phase III trials (which are the final step before FDA approval) should provide a pretty good indication of the drugs potential.

Why then do companies and their investors often face unexpected late stage surprises like those experienced recently by Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), Telik (Nasdaq: TELK), Neurocrine Biosciences (Nasdaq: NBIX) and Threshold Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: THLD) whose shares plunged 50% yesterday after a Phase III disappointment.







Speculation by industry watchers has varied from the conspiracy theorists version of “they new it wouldn’t work all along, but wanted to keep raising money to pay their own salaries,”

to the scientific explanation of

“that is just how science works – until you ramp up to truly large scale trials, you won’t know for sure.” After having spoken to and dealt with many scientists and top executives at hundreds of biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device companies over the years we have no doubts about their sincere belief in the potential of their products to help conquer the diseases that plague humanity.

Many of these industry leaders are driven by a personal need to find a cure to a disease that took a friend or loved one.

While the profit motive certainly plays a role - as it should - in the industry, we believe that most close observers would grant the sincerity of the indus .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:PFE Nasdaq:TELK Nasdaq:NBIX Nasdaq:THLD Wed, 12 May 2010 13:44:52 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=117Economic Policy/Economic Theory/Industry News/Stocks/Apparel/Compu. Software/Service/Consumer Non-Durables/Electrical and Electronics/Media/Pharmaceuticals/World Stock/Computers/Food/Agriculture/Pharmaceuticals/Government/
– Life Science Stocks.com –

Might still smell as sweet, but counterfeit medications, packaged and designed to look just like the originals, are an entirely different story. While they may look just like the originals, even to the extent of copied holographic seals and imprints visible only under ultra violet light, counterfeit medications often contain inert or even harmful ingredients.

While the problem in developing countries has been largely limited to high cost blockbuster medications and lifestyle drugs including antihistamines, statins, erectile dysfunction medications, anti-virals and antibiotics from makers such as Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY), GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) and Merck (NYSE: MRK). The problem takes on immediate deadly consequences in developing countries where counterfeit copies of everything from baby formula to anti-malarials are overwhelming efforts to detect and prevent their use.

Fake baby formula has caused the deaths of thousands of infants in China from malnutrition.

The World Health Organization estimates that over 25% of anti-malarial drugs sold in developing countries is fake, contributing to as many as 200,000 deaths a year. When counterfeit products, pirating and intellectual property theft become an issue in international commerce, fingers inevitably get pointed at China.

Whether it is counterfeit LV bags, pirated Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) software, copied Disney (NYSE: DIS) t-shirts or fake Nike (NYSE: NKE) sneakers, industrial scale counterfeiting is a boom industry in China.

While Chinese authorities seem to be unwilling crack down on “traditional” counterfeiting believing that only the rights owners - who are, for the most part, foreign corporations - are hurt; the reality of fake drugs is different.

The cruelty, viciousness and inhumanity of drug counterfeiters who are willing to kill and maim innoc .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:PFE NYSE:BMY NYSE:GSK NYSE:MRK Nasdaq:MSFT NYSE:DIS NYSE:NKE Wed, 12 May 2010 13:29:52 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=115Industry News/Market News/Stocks/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Hospitals and Health Care/Medical and Health Related Services/Medical Instruments and Equipment/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
- Life Science Stocks.com -The BioCEO & Investor Conference kicked off early this week with a surprise early morning announcement by presenting company Onyx Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ONXX) that their pivotal Phase III trial of Nexavar® for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (primary liver cancer) had been a resounding success.

The independent data monitoring committee supervising the trial had found sufficiently positive results to recommend an early stop to the trial, and the company, with the concurrence of the panel had decided to make Nexavar available to all patients on the placebo arm of the trial. Shares of Onyx soared Monday morning, and continued their rise on Tuesday trading at $26.02 in after hours trading, a gain of over 100% from Friday’s close of $12.26. In the cardiovascular arena, a panel chaired by Mark Penn, MD, PhD and Director of the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation described some potentially groundbreaking work in cardiovascular drugs that could have a major impact in future treatment protocols in light of the growing controversy over the viability of the “stent first, ask questions later” model for cardiac care.

Some significant studies released recently have indicated that the far to many patients are receiving stents, and that drugs may be a far better alternative for the vast majority of patients who are not suffering from severe debilitating chest pain.

With a growing trend towards increasing the role of drugs, the BioCEO panel members described some interesting drug candidates in their pipelines. Stanley Crooke, Chairman and CEO of Isis Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ISIS) (Nasdaq: ISIS) spoke enthusiastically about the applications of his company’s breakthrough Antisense technology in developing an aggressive lipid control agent that has po .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:ONXX Nasdaq:ISIS Nasdaq:DCGN Nasdaq:VSGN Nasdaq:CYTK Wed, 12 May 2010 13:35:44 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=113Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Stocks/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Medical and Health Related Services/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
The Food and Drug Administration recently announced approval of a new test to determine the likelihood of relapse for breast cancer patients. The test, called Mammaprint is currently marketed in The Netherlands and several other countries by privately held Amsterdam based Agendia.

The test is emblematic of a new and emerging idea in medical science that has the potential to reshape the way medicine is practiced. It has become increasingly clear that genetics play a large role in a broad range of diseases and that an individuals genetic makeup can influence not only their chances of having a relapse following successful cancer therapy, but also their response to specific drugs.

Making use of these insights would enable the rise of “personalized medicine;”

medicine customized to treat the patient, rather than disease. The ability to know with a degree of certainty, what drugs and treatments work best for specific individual patients has the potential to transform medical care in a number of ways, both by improving patient outcomes, and by reducing costs.

The Mammaprint test, as an example would benefit not only the breast cancer patients who have the highest risk of relapse and thus would most likely benefit from precautionary chemotherapy, but would also benefit the patients at low risk of relapse who could safely avoid the pain, expense and discomfort of unnecessary additional treatment To date, the difficulty in implementing this concept has been fourfold:

first, identify a disease, or a drug that has a clearly different effect or progression across a population; second, isolate a genetic marker, or markers, that can be used to clearly differentiate the response; third, develop an accurate, reliable, cost effective test for the identified genetic markers;

fourth, gain FDA approval. Agendia’s successful progress through this four s .....(click here for full story)]]> Nasdaq:CLDA Nasdaq:ARIA Nasdaq:CEGE Nasdaq:GTOP Wed, 12 May 2010 13:36:52 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=111Market Commentary/Market News/Real Estate/Stocks/Real Estate/Real Estate/
February 6, 2007

–

In an apparent effort to wrap up the bidding war over Equity Office Properties Trust (NYSE: EOP) private equity firm Blackstone Group raised their $54 per share all cash offer by $1.50 a share to $55.50;

the new offer came in response to Vornado Realty Trust’s (NYSE: VNO) $56 per share cash and equity bid.

In an early mourning announcement, Equity Office Products board accepted the increased offer and recommended that shareholders approve the deal in the ballot scheduled for February 7, 2007. Equity office products board described several reasons for their support of the Blackstone bid.

Their reasons primarily focused on the higher current cash value of the offer, along with uncertainty and risk related to the equity compensation portion of the Vornado bid. The higher bid for Equity Office Products helped boost the overall Office REIT sector, with gainers outnumbering losers by over 4-1 in the REIT Review Office REIT Sector just before the close of trading today.

The gainers included: Alexandria RE Equities (NYSE: ARE), Brandywine Realty Trust (NYSE: BDN), Biomed Realty Trust (NYSE: BMR), Brookfield Properties Corp (NYSE: BPO),

Boston Properties (NYSE: BXP),

Digital Realty Trust (NYSE: DLR), Equity Office Properties EOP,

Kilroy Realty Corp. (NYSE: KRC),

Liberty Property Trust (NYSE: LRY),

Capital Lease Funding (NYSE: LSE),

Maguire Properties (NYSE: MPG),

Mission West Properties (NYSE: MSW),

Corporate Office Properties Trust (NYSE: OFC),



Republic Property Trust (NYSE: RPB) and

SL Green Realty Corp. (NYSE: SLG).



Among the few issues losing ground were Citigroup Global Mkts. Principal Protected Eq (NYSE: PDY), and Mack-Cali Realty Corp. (NYSE: CLI). With the Tuesday vote rapidly approaching, it will be interesting to see if Vornado comes back wi .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:EOP NYSE:VNO NYSE:ARE NYSE:BDN NYSE:BMR NYSE:BXP NYSE:DLR NYSE:KRC NYSE:LRY NYSE:LSE NYSE:MPG NYSE:MSW NYSE:OFC NYSE:RPB NYSE:SLG Wed, 12 May 2010 13:35:03 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=108Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Real Estate/Stocks/Bank Loan/Commercial Banking/Large Growth/Real Estate/Real Estate/
February 2, 2007

–

It looks like a long running bidding war over Equity Office Properties Trust (NYSE: EOP)

between private equity firm Blackstone Group and Vornado Realty Trust (NYSE: VNO) is finally drawing to a close, with Vornado’s last minute $56 a share cash and equity bid failing to win the support of Equity Office Properties’ board over Blackstone’s $54 all cash offer. The $54 a share price, not including assumed debt, values the deal at $22.3 billion; well up from the $20 billion price tag we reported when we wrote about the deal back in November. With widespread concern over a residential real estate “bubble” notwithstanding, it seems that the office market remains an attractive proposition for owners, investors and operators.

Vornado’s intent was clearly to add EOP'S properties to their portfolio with the goal of increasing returns and maximizing value.

With private equity firm Blackstone taking control, it isn’t immediately clear to what extent they intend to hold, repackage, or flip the properties they will be acquiring.

In both cases, it is clear that the bidders felt that the properties are undervalued in EOP. That is a very positive sign for US real estate in general as two of the leading investment companies in the world controlled by sophisticated investors were willing to bid up the price of Equity Office Products by fifty percent in only four months since rumors of the deal began to surface back in September.



Despite talk of unattractive CAP rates in the commercial real estate markets it seems that the bidders saw considerable unrealized value in Equity Office Properties; that bodes well for the commercial market in general and for office and commercial REITS like SL Green

(NYSE: SLG), Corporate Office Properties Trust

(NYSE: OFC),

Mack-Cali Realty Corp

(NYSE: CLI) and

Boston Properties

(NYSE: BXP) in particul .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:EOP NYSE:VNO NYSE:SLG NYSE:OFC NYSE:CLI NYSE:BXP Wed, 12 May 2010 13:30:36 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=106Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Stocks/Biotechnology/Financial/Healthcare/Hospitals and Health Care/Insurance/Medical and Health Related Services/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
The surgery has become

the “common sense” surgical approach to treating coronary disease.

A cardiologist sees a patient and as a result of complaints of chest pain, or a suspicious stress test, decides to investigate the possibility of coronary artery disease and prescribes cardiac catheterization to further diagnose any blockages.

When the patient undergoes the catheterization the findings most often show at least one partial blockage.

The natural response at that point is to implant a stent, as minimal further effort is needed on the part of the cardiologist. The tubing needed to implant the stent has already been inserted into the patient to enable the procedure needed to determine if the stent is even needed.

The implantation of the stent becomes a common sense, ‘might as well do it as long as we are there’ decision at that point. That’s great news for the cardiologist, who earns an average insurance reimbursement of about $1,000 for implanting a stent as well as for the stent manufacturers led by Boston Scientific

(NYSE: BSX) and Johnson and Johnson

(NYSE: JNJ), but it may not be such good news for the patient.

A number of long term studies are emerging that question both the utility and efficacy of stents in a broad range of patients. In patients with the most severe blockages, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that bypass surgery might produce better long-term results.

In patients with very mild blockages that produce little or no symptoms, an additional body of evidence suggests that drug treatment, with a combination of asprin, anti-hypertensive, and cholesterol lowering agents may well have better long term results than stents.&nbs .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:BSX NYSE:JNJ NYSE:PFE NYSE:GSK NYSE:MRK NYSE:BMY NYSE:SNY NYSE:NVS Wed, 12 May 2010 13:36:05 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=104Active Trading/Industry News/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Biotechnology/Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals/Medical/Pharmaceuticals/Biotechnology/
may be making a bid to acquire Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) .

According to French publication Le Lettre de l'Expansion, the two drug makers are in active merger talks, and a pre-merger agreement may have already been signed. The merger, if completed would vault the combined company ahead of current number two drug maker GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) and leader Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)

into the number one position as the largest drug maker in the world. Among the rationales put forward for the merger are the two large drug maker’s marketing partnership for the blockbuster blood thinner Plavix, as well as blood pressure medication Avapro/Avalide along with the same sort of efficiencies in marketing, regulatory affairs and back office operations that have made bank mergers so popular over the past decade. The question is whether drug companies are so very like banks, or if this merger is more a result of a failure of imagination than an intelligent business decision? To a certain extent, the merger smacks of a last-man-standing approach by big pharma management that seems tired of the pressure of maintaining earnings growth by attempting to turn out blockbuster after blockbuster.

Why struggle to produce new drugs when you hopefully grab a few years of earnings growth from consolidation and cost cutting?

The problem is that the evidence shows that drug companies aren’t banks.

Pfizer’s take over of Pharmacia several years ago did little to boost Pfizer’s fortunes, and there is little reason to expect much difference from this merger. If any of the Big Pharma companies have a real hope of maintaining their positions among the largest and most profitable corporations in the world, they will need to seriously re-think their approach to drug development in the face of increasingly questionable pipelines.

One possible so .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:SNY NYSE:BMY NYSE:GSK NYSE:PFE Wed, 12 May 2010 13:41:58 EST wsirss.xml http://wallstreetideas.com/wsi/wsinews.php?site=wsi&id=101Industry News/Internet Stocks/Market Commentary/Market News/Market Opinion/Personal Finance/Stocks/Communications/Compu. Software/Service/Computer Hardware/Consumer Accessories/Consumer Non-Durables/Specialty-Communications/Telecommunications/Computers/Entertainment/Tourism/Internet/Online/Telecommunications/
As we predicted over a month ago, the brave new digital world was unveiled today when Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs

today unveiled the iPhone at the 2007 MacWorld conference in San Francisco.

With the introduction of the new phone, Apple is trying to transfer its success with the iPod, which has sold over 70 million units and captured over 60% of the portable digital player market, into the much larger billion unit cell phone market. The new iPhone, which Jobs described as “super smart,” will be the thinnest phone on the market, at under a half inch thick, and comes equipped with a touch screen, a 2 megapixel digital camera, headphone slot and replaceable SIM card.

It operates with a patented new “multi-touch” screen user interface and dispenses with any dials, disks or buttons. The iPhone will initially role out through ATT’s Cingular Wireless service in June, in either a four gigabyte model priced at $499 or an eight gigabyte $599 model.

The iPhone will charge and synch with the users computer through the use of Apple’s iTunes software. As we reported, the new phone will pose a major challenge for mobile communications device makers like Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Samsung, LG, Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM), Sanyo, Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY), Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM)

who will have to move quickly to fend off the challenge, or risk being left behind in cell phones the way SONY

(NYSE: SNE)

and its Walkman was left behind in the portable music player market. If the iPhone introduction wasn’t enough, Jobs also announced that the previously unveiled iTV, an interactive video device to play downloaded video over a home television set, would go on the market next month as “Apple TV.”

Initially, Apple TV will ship with a 40 gigabyte hard drive and a $299 price tag.

With all the attention focused on th .....(click here for full story)]]> NYSE:MOT Nasdaq:QCOM Nasdaq:ERICY NYSE:NOK Nasdaq:RIMM Nasdaq:AAPL NYSE:SNE Wed, 12 May 2010 13:39:12 EST wsirss.xml