Investment analyst predicts explosive biotech growth

In a recent interview with The Life Sciences Report, a Casey Research analyst likened genetics to other twentieth-century technologies which remained in development for many years but eventually yielded consumer products that are now all but everywhere.

Just as the plasma TV (invented in the 1930s), the LED light (1960s), the industrial robot (also a child of the '60s), the touch-screen interface for computers (early 1980s) and other inventions we think of as thoroughly modern took decades to go from the lab into our everyday lives, it will take considerable time for genetic medicine to fully develop.

When it was first invented in the 1990s, he noted, genetic sequencing was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, requiring billions of dollars and years to decode a single genome. Today, the same task can be completed in a day and for a few thousand dollars. This, he said, now makes possible the large-scale development and marketing of genetic medicine.

Rep. Schwartz (D-PA) calls on Congress to extend biotech tax credit

Last month, Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a sernior member of the House Budget Committee, said Congress should extend the biotech tax credit to stimulate the industry in an opinion piece published in Politico.

Rep. Shwartz was referring to the H.R. 1988, the Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project Tax Credit Exentsion Act of 2011, which she is co-sponsoring with Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA). The bill was introduced on May 25, 2011, and seeks to "amend the Internal Revenue Code to extend for an additional five-year period the authority to invest in and allocate credit amounts for a qualifying therapeutic discovery project."

She pointed out that the Therapeutic Tax Credit of 2009 made $1 billion available for some 3,000 small biotech and bioscience companies in 47 states through tax credits and grants, and as a result contributed to growth in the biotech sector over the past year. The original law authrorizing the tax credit was effective for two years only.

If passed, the bill would provide an additional $1 billion dollars to biotech and bioscience companies with fewer than 250 employees through 2017.

Big Pharma relying on deals with small biotech firms in the wake of financial crisis

Large drug companies like Roche are increasingly making deals with smaller biotech developers to diversify their research projects. As a result of the economic crisis, small biotech firms have seen a significant decrease in funding from private equity, hedge funds, and venture capitalists. Roche's shares outperformed the sector this year due in part to collaboration with US biotech Plexxikon.