The Motley Fool: Alnylam Offers an Exciting Rare Disease Pipeline, but Expectations Are High

"Biotechs are risky" is a standard boilerplate warning when writing about the sector, but some situations are riskier than others. In the case of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY  ) , the sell-side seems so eager to make a bullish case that uncommonly high approval odds are already being applied to the company's early stage pipeline.

There is also still the prospect of competition from Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS  ) and its partner GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK  ) , as well as other large players like Sanofi (NYSE: SNY  ) , Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO  ) , and Baxter (NYSE: BAX  ) . Against that is the possibility that Alnylam is following a path that could closely resemble that of other rare disease biotechs like Genzyme, Alexion (NASDAQ: ALXN  ) , or BioMarin (NASDAQ: BMRN  ) .

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Alnylam Offers an Exciting Rare Disease Pipeline, but Expectations Are High