Thursday, December 29, 2011

Seeking Alpha: Alnylam Looks Nearly Left For Dead

By no means is it easy to try to launch an entirely new class of pharmaceuticals, but that is essentially what Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY) has set out to do. Despite some encouraging (albeit very early) signs of success, investors have very much taken note of Big Pharma's increasing skepticism towards what this company is trying to do. Consequently, the stock trades for little more than the cash on its books despite a promising pipeline that is only getting started in human studies.

The Long March
Investors who have high hopes for Alnylam's RNA interference (RNAi) technology may want to take a page from the history books. Although Amgen (AMGN), Biogen Idec (BIIB), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), and Roche (RHHBY.PK) have all had success with recombinant protein and monoclonal antibody drugs, the reality is that the science underpinning these drugs really started early in the 20th century and it took more than a decade for promising (and Nobel Prize-winning) research in the 1970's to actually result in approvable drugs.

Read more here:
Alnylam Looks Nearly Left For Dead

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