BIIB

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
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Hi all,

As most of you in this board I have a position in CELG. I tried GILD as well, but sold out because I agree with Saul. I don’t like their price policy for their Hepatitis C drug.

I’m interested in Biotech and I came across BIIB and learned about their drug investigation for Alzheimer’s disease, that is mass spreading as people live longer. My father died of it.

In this article the three (CELG, BIIB and GILD) are recommend as the best biotech to invest. Has someone made some research in BIIB that wanted to share?

http://m.fool.com/investing/general/2015/04/11/the-3-best-st…

Best

Maria

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Hi Maria,

Like you I’m just beginning to learn a little about BIIB. I don’t own any shares. Recently I read a pretty detailed post about early test results of BIIB’s Alzheimer’s drug. It was by another MF member who tracks research in the area.

The takeaway was that BIIB’s drug (aducanumab) is one of a class of drugs that break up and clear amyloid plaques which build up in Alzheimer’s patients. However none of the class definitively improves cognition after clearance of the plaques - they just help prevent progression of the disease. BIIB’s drug showed some evidence of changing cognitive decline in minimal to mild stage Alzheimer’s sufferers, which is a step forward, but still will not help patients in the moderate to severe stage.

BIIB’s drug is the first to show hope of treating patients in the mild to moderate stage. Tests of other drugs in the same class might show similar effectiveness at preventing progression in patients at the same stage. At the end of the day, the drugs might be given as a preventative treatment to patients who show evidence of amyloid plaque build up in the brain but have not shown signs of cognitive decline.

This is just a non-technical summary and you should continue your own investigation. All the same, it helped me better understand the recent excitement about the early stage test results of BIIB’s Alzheimer’s drug. It sounds like a hopeful advance but not a miracle breakthrough. I plan to keep an eye out for future developments.

Hope this helps.

RinChar

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Thanks RinChar!

I appreciate so much your information.
Lost of memory from Alzheimer scare me to death!
I’ll try to do some investing research of BIIB as Saul have taught us.

Best

Maria

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The takeaway was that BIIB’s drug (aducanumab) is one of a class of drugs that break up and clear amyloid plaques which build up in Alzheimer’s patients.

I know very little about BIIB, but have some familiarity with Alzheimer’s due to family history. So, my ears are always open to news on research in this area.

Recently there have been some articles on new research pointing to the idea that amyloid plaque build-up is not the cause of loss of cognition or Alzheimer’s. So this could change an investment thesis for BIIB if a large part of their focus is on breaking up amyloid plaques.

New research has found that plaques are not the main cause of Alzheimer’s disease, but rather the protein tau, also known as “tangles.”

“For a very long time, we believed, for almost 100 years, that [amyloid-beta] plaques are the main culprit in Alzheimer’s disease,” the study’s senior investigator, Charbel E-H Moussa, MB, assistant professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University Medical Center, told FoxNews.com. “This study shows it’s another protein – a very, very important one, called tau, is basically the main guilty one.”

Researchers found that tau modulates how much amyloid protein stays inside a cell, and how much is secreted outside the cell to form plaque. This build-up is what leads to neuron death. The plaque that forms outside a cell are not toxic, as previously believed, they found.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/31/tau-protein-not-pla…

An age-related brain disorder, Alzheimer’s gradually erodes a person’s memory, thinking, and behavior. Plaque made of beta-amyloid protein fragments and tangles formed from tau proteins are familiar hallmarks of disease in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Now, a new study alters prevailing theories of how the disease destroys brain cells. It is the tau, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center say, and not the plaque that spurs neuron death in Alzheimer’s disease. Not only does this explain why some people with plaque build-up in their brains don’t have dementia, this new understanding may go a long way to developing proper drugs to treat patients.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/new-theory-alzheimers-it-tau-pro…

okapimoon

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