Exelixis diversifies
It's starting to appear that Exelixis (EXEL) is going to be the most capable and diversified small biotech company in the country.
News today -- EXEL is now in a pact with Wyeth to develop new drugs for liver and metabolic diseases.
And last week, EXEL entered an agreement with Bristol-Myers, also focused on metabolic disorders -- but this time, with a focus on developing a new class of anti-cholesterol drugs.
All this comes as Exelixis' own drug programs are starting to move through the clinic. EXEL made it's mark years ago as a contract researcher for pharma companies, and everything I've read reassures me that their science is top-notch (I'm not smart enough to evaluate their science myself, but I first learned of EXEL from reading a piece by Charly Travers at the Motley Fool, who I greatly respect, and have read many other pieces on them in the financial press, as well as listening carefully to their conference calls and presentations). I filled out my EXEL position about two months ago, and I'm very pleased with their recent progress.
So not only does EXEL have two new potentially lucrative licensing deals in place, in addition to the several licensing deals they already had and the innovative financing they've done with outside investors, but they're finally going to get to the important stages of determining which of their own compounds might make it through to the market.
I wrote a while back that early November was a key time for EXEL since that was when they released preliminary phase one results on three of their drugs, and indeed it was a significant time. It didn't move the stock all that much because none of the results where shockingly good or bad (as almost no phase one results ever are -- the exception lately has been Vertex's VX-950).
But what we do now know is that their three lead cancer compounds are moving out of phase I and into phase II by the first quarter of next year. As results from those come in over the coming years we'll really start to find out what EXEL's stock might do. In the meantime, the licensing deals they've signed recently will help them to further build up their research capabilities and to increase cash flow to fund these expensive clinical trials.
So no single big announcement from EXEL of late, but the news continues to build and is nicely positive even as Exelixis remains largely under the radar.
News today -- EXEL is now in a pact with Wyeth to develop new drugs for liver and metabolic diseases.
And last week, EXEL entered an agreement with Bristol-Myers, also focused on metabolic disorders -- but this time, with a focus on developing a new class of anti-cholesterol drugs.
All this comes as Exelixis' own drug programs are starting to move through the clinic. EXEL made it's mark years ago as a contract researcher for pharma companies, and everything I've read reassures me that their science is top-notch (I'm not smart enough to evaluate their science myself, but I first learned of EXEL from reading a piece by Charly Travers at the Motley Fool, who I greatly respect, and have read many other pieces on them in the financial press, as well as listening carefully to their conference calls and presentations). I filled out my EXEL position about two months ago, and I'm very pleased with their recent progress.
So not only does EXEL have two new potentially lucrative licensing deals in place, in addition to the several licensing deals they already had and the innovative financing they've done with outside investors, but they're finally going to get to the important stages of determining which of their own compounds might make it through to the market.
I wrote a while back that early November was a key time for EXEL since that was when they released preliminary phase one results on three of their drugs, and indeed it was a significant time. It didn't move the stock all that much because none of the results where shockingly good or bad (as almost no phase one results ever are -- the exception lately has been Vertex's VX-950).
But what we do now know is that their three lead cancer compounds are moving out of phase I and into phase II by the first quarter of next year. As results from those come in over the coming years we'll really start to find out what EXEL's stock might do. In the meantime, the licensing deals they've signed recently will help them to further build up their research capabilities and to increase cash flow to fund these expensive clinical trials.
So no single big announcement from EXEL of late, but the news continues to build and is nicely positive even as Exelixis remains largely under the radar.
Labels: EXEL
This article posted by One Guy @ 12/22/2005 10:34:00 AM 1 comments
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