3 Biotech Stocks That Could Change the World

By Mike Volkin - June 15, 2012 | Tickers: AOL, MSFT, RAI, CIGX, TEVA | 0 Comments

Mike is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinions of our bloggers and are not formally edited.

3 Biotech Stocks That Could Change The World

By George S. Mack, The Life Sciences Report

For more interviews with sector experts and analysts, please sign up for our newsletter at http://www.thelifesciencesreport.com.

Every investor is in search of a breakthrough that will change the world. Patrick Cox has seen it all before as an insider at Netscape Communications before it was acquired by AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) at the end of 1998 and before Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) ever noticed that that the world was shifting under its feet. The browser revolution began with the straightforward idea that all computer operating systems could be networked with seamless cross-platform ease. I recently interviewed Cox, now editor of Breakthrough Technology Alert and Technology Profits Confidential, for the story Biotech Ideas That Will Change the World in The Life Sciences Report. He sees a new revolution in progress as stem cell technologies and targeted therapies begin to change the entire paradigm of medical practice.

Saying Cox is optimistic may be an understatement. "Just as people were incapable of understanding the magnitude of the change in terms of computing and networks," he says, "Most people are incapable of understanding how extremely fast biotechnologies are now moving and their impact on health, life spans and equities."

Investors have been exposed to two decades of hype around stem cells. As an investor myself, I want to know when these technologies are going to be validated by major drug companies. "The first big pharma collaboration and deal has already been cut, and that is with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA)which has an agreement with BioTime Inc.(BTX) for its stem cells for retinal disease," says Cox. "Teva is paying for that entire process, so I think that it's going to move forward relatively quickly." In October 2010 BioTime said that its majority-owned Cell Cure Neurosciences unit in Israel and Teva, also based in Israel, would collaborate on development of Cell Cure's OpRegen formulation for management of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). OpRegen is Cell Cure's proposed embryonic stem cell-derived therapy, which contains retinal pigment epithelial cells. "It's a question of regulatory approval, not of developing the science which is already completely worked out," he says. "I don't second guess the regulators, but I think that the dynamics of health care are such that we desperately need these existing cures, and these regenerative therapies will therefore going to be accelerated. They have to be."

I ask Cox about the traditional steps that normally require 1520 years of development time to produce a new therapy. "You're saying that it can take 15 or 20 years, but many of these technologies have already been in the works for 15 or 20 years. So we don't have to wait that long," he says. Speaking specifically about stem cell technologies, "These are not small-molecule drugs, which is the old model where if you found an interesting molecule you would modify it, then get a patent, then try it in animals and then people for safety and hopefully get one to the market. That's a 1520 year process. But with regenerative medicine, we're duplicating processes that are going on right now in your body, so we know they work."

It's not an overstatement to say that Cox loves Provectus Pharmaceuticals Inc. (PVCT: OTC), which he refers to as "a fantastic story." German scientist Paul Ehrlich (1854 1915) conceptualized the idea of a "magic bullet" when he noted that he could stain diseased cells while healthy cells of the same type were left unstained. His theory was that perhaps in the same fashion those diseased cells could be targeted for a cure . A century later investigators are still searching for magic bullets. The quirk of fate in this case is that Erlich was working with coal-tar derivative rose bengal, which is the ingredient of Provectus' PV-10 now in clinical studies targeting cancers. The company is now preparing for a phase 3 trial of its PV-10 candidate in melanoma patients. I want to know when I should buy Provectus. "Don't even look at the price for five years," he says. "Come back then and buy me a beer."

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3 Biotech Stocks That Could Change the World