Biotech stocks and index - Good years to come!

An index of biotech drug companies shares has climbed nearly 50 percent in the past 12 months to all-time highs as the industry starts to launch drugs developed by identifying genes associated with disease.

The rise at such a fast pace is triggering the inevitable talk of a bubble. Although it can follow the opposite direction. Manly because of a problem of the insdustrie itself.  90 percent of experimental drugs that reach mid-stage testing in humans do not make it past that point.

Compared with a year ago, the Nasdaq Biotech Index, which is weighted by market cap, is up 45 percent. Over the same period, the S&P 500 Index has gained 25 percent.

BEST AND WORST BUSINESS

Gilead Sciences, the world's largest maker of branded HIV drugs, is viewed as the leader in a race to develop a more safe and effective therapy for hepatitis C, a market Wall Street expects to garner billions of dollars in annual sales.

Short interest in biotech companies with market caps between $2 billion and $10 billion has fallen to 9.2 percent from 11.3 percent in the past 12 months, while short interest for companies with market caps of $500 million to $2 billion has increased to 15.2 percent from 12.7 percent over the past year.

Wall Street analysts estimate that shares of large-cap Gilead, which have more than doubled over the past year, trade at about 26 times 2013 earnings and 12 times 2015 earnings.

The question is how long the rally will continue.

Consensus estimates call for average combined annual earnings growth of 21 percent for biotechs in the next three years, compared with 9 percent for S&P 500 companies, according to Deutsche Bank.

"Biotech is both the worst business in the world and the best business in the world”. The decision is on you to invest or not to.

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Salmonella Detection Market

The pathogenic detection industry has a market value that has been rising in the last years, presenting a market value of 563 million dollars in 2002 for the USA.

This industry presents applications in the health, military, ambient and food areas thus having various sectors to grow. Despite the several areas of application, it has been in the food industry where it has displayed more growth, because it’s where there are higher rates of contamination as we can see in table 1.

Table 1: Food illnesses in the US caused by major foodborne pathogens (CDC, 1999)

In the market there are two types of analysis: the conventional method and the rapid where the great difference between them is the time and precision of the analysis.

Due the great need of controlling the food quality and ensure the health of the consumers, it becomes necessary a continuous and strict control, thus more than 100 millions analysis are made per year in the US, table 2.

Table 2 - US food industry total microbial tests per sector

In the US there are more than 60 thousand food processing installations, 250 thousand food selling establishments and around 600 thousand restaurants and take-away establishments. All of them are possible buyers of our detection system of Salmonella.

Screening for the presence of Salmonella in foods by conventional methods involve a 3-step technique: non-selective pre-enrichment (18-24 hours), selective enrichment in (at least) two different selective broth media (24-48 hours) followed by plating on (at least) two different selective/indicative agars (24-48 hours). This leads to a total time for yes/no screening result of up to 5 days.

There are various methods for the detection of the Salmonella bacteria most of them involve culture enrichment.

At the moment there are several kits for the detection of Salmonella, which rely in different technologies like for example real-time PCR and antigens.

Im compiling a table of the common producers of these kits. I'll post it in here in a post to come.

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Public vs Private biotechnology research

The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which enabled universities to claim title to inventions and to license those inventions to the private sector, is often highlighted as the quintessential example of policies promoting the commercialization of academic knowledge, including  technology transfers, university-industry research collaborations, and industry funding for university research.

Proponents of private–public research collaborations claim they will lead to more efficient knowledge and technology transfers which, in turn, will lead to higher social value. Skeptics counter that universities and industries have distinct research cultures and that the commercialization of university science threatens these distinct cultures.

Developing countries and Biotech - Brazil

Brazil is an upper-middle income developing country as classified by World Bank. Brazil has 200 million people, most whom live in poverty with a total life expectancy of 72.9 years. Many people suffer from chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, cancer, and diabetes. These diseases accounted for 72% of the disease burden for the poor in Brazil in 2007, with neuropsychiatric disorders being the leading cause of death.

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Biodiesel at home - Part 1

The mechanism that I'll be presenting here it's a simple process that anyone can do it by themselves. It is called transesterification and is summed up  as the reaction of  an oil with an alcohol to form esters and glycerol.

Transesterification reaction (Fangrui et al, 1999)

Yeasts and food - Beer

Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Beer is a famous beverage mainly consumed in the north and centre European countries. It is appreciated by almost all people there and most of them don´t know that this product is in the roots of Biotechnology. Thus, a few posts will be dedicated to the origins and methods to produce this well-known product.
Traditionally and historically yeasts are associated with alcoholic fermentation. This can be well understood in face of the role of yeasts in the production of alcoholic beverages, like beer and wine.