Noven Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (...

Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISIS) is a biopharmaceutical company that focuses entirely on RNA-based technologies and primarily, on antisense therapies.

Here’s my take on what that means…

The scientists at Isis seek to treat disease by first identifying the sequence of a gene known to have a causative role in that disease.

They then synthesize a strand of nucleic acid (DNA, RNA or a chemical analogue) to bind to the messenger RNA (mRNA) produced by that gene and to modify it or in effect, turn the gene “off”.

It’s that synthesized nucleic acid that is called an “antisense”. (The unblocked gene’s mRNA is called the “sense” sequence.)

The folks at Isis have been working with this technology for years. Back in 1998, the company received marketing clearance for the world’s first antisense drug. That same drug, Vitravene (now marketed by Novartis), has been approved by the FDA for the treatment for cytomegalovirus retinitis.

Antisense drugs could

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Bristol-Myers Squibb, Inc. (BMY) remains one of our top-picks in the pharmaceutical industry for 2009. We like Bristol for a number of reasons, including the company's solid financial position, a deep pipeline with significant biologic exposure, and turnaround/acquisition potential.Bristol also offers a big dividend of $1.24 per share (recently confirmed Thursday), which yields 5.5%. The company has the lowest exposure to foreign exchange translation among its U.S. peers, and is expected to grow the bottom-line by approximately 11% CAGR [compound annual growth rate] through 2012.Oh, by the way, Bristol is sitting on over $8 billion in cash, and just announced today they will be spinning off the Mead Johnson Nutritional business to shareholders in 2009. The Mead Johnson IPO is expected to fetch another $1 billion in cash for Bristol.  By the end of the first quarter 2009, Bristol could be sitting on nearly ...

The ETF Innovators [ETFI] Global Healthcare Cost Containment Index profiled in the accompanying table is updated and expanded to include more companies from my recent Analysis of Generic Drug Companies from India. The index is structured to include companies with market caps between $150M-$60B, which are involved in producing generic healthcare products such as generic drugs and pharmacy benefit managers which do not have retail store and insurance components. The Top 10 Rated companies are sorted by market cap, with Taro Pharma (TAROF) involved in litigation with India's top generic drug company by market cap, Sun Pharma (524715), to fend off a tender offer which Taro claims undervalues the company. Momenta Pharma (MNTA) and Novartis (NVS) expect to launch a ...

Abbott Labs (ABT) is a consistent performer with diversified healthcare operations, including pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical nutrition products, and medical devices/stents. ABT is back to the lower end of its trading range near 50 bucks, presenting an excellent entry point with a 2.8% dividend yield and forward PE of about 14X. Celgene (CELG) is also trading at the low end of its trading range around 50 bucks as a large-cap growth stock focused on cancer biotech products and research with an estimated PEG ratio below one. China Medical (CMED) is trading near its IPO levels of August 2005 despite excellent growth prospects and is a buy below 20 bucks with a dividend yield of 2.5% and market cap of $540M as uncertainty over a $345M acquisition has spooked some investors, sending the stock down sharply by over 50% in the past three ...

The accompanying table [click to enlarge or download] presents the top five rated companies with market caps of at least $250M from each of the 10 new healthcare indexes developed by ETF Innovators [ETFI] from a database of about 500 companies worldwide. The ETFI Global Healthcare Sector PerformIdex is a dynamic, semi-active index with monthly updates which consists of the 50 top-rated companies on an equal weight basis from each of the 10 healthcare indexes listed below and represents an alternative strategy to existing health composite ETFs -- which tend to have highly correlated returns and over-weight exposure to the same widely held companies such as Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Pfizer (PFE), Novartis (NVS), Abbott Labs (ABT), Merck (MRK), and Amgen (AMGN). 1.) ...

NexMed, Inc., a New Jersey based pharmaceutical and medical technology company, will receive $3.5 million from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novaris, for fulfilling patent and enrollment milestones as part of a product agreement originally signed in 2005. NexMed announced today that they have received a Notice of Allowance from the patent office for its patent application entitled “Antifungal Nail Coat and Method of Use”. A Notice of Allowance indicates that all the basic steps of a patent application process are completed.

The patent is for a topical application of terbinafine formulated with NexACT® for the treatment of onychomycosis, a fungal infection of fingernails or toenails. NexACT is the company’s transdermal drug delivery technology. Under the agreement, development, production, and commercialization of the new product will be handled by Novaris.

NexMed CFO, Mark Westgate, commented, “In addition to the $2 million patent milestone, NexMed will also receive $1.5 million from Novartis for

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The following group of biotech companies have market caps of at least $300M with a one year stock price change that is below the iShares Nasdaq Biotech ETF (IBB) loss of 21.8% (Source: Google Finance, 10/25/08) with potential upside catalysts over the next year. Alnylam Pharma (ALNY): $872M, -31.6% Biogen Idec (BIIB): $12B, -48.4% BioMarin Pharma (BMRN): $1.7B, -33% Momenta Pharma (MNTA): $348M, -23.4% Momenta and Novartis (NVS) expect to launch a generic version (M-Enoxaparin) of the injectable blood thinner Lovenox in 2009, pending approval of their ANDA by the Generic Division of the FDA. With Momenta trading in single digits again after reaching as high as $20 per share; an approval for M-Enoxaparin would be a significant catalyst since Lovenox posted sales of about $4B in the last year for Sanofi-Aventis (SNY). Since trading into the upper $70s after putting itself up for ...

October 16, picks

CNBC Fast Money traders picks..track them at:

http://trackthepros.com/stocks/category/228

Adami:

GOOG - Google - Buy Gasoline - Buy IBM - IBM - Buy UTX - United Technologies - Buy NVS - Novartis - Buy - Final Trade

Finerman: OIH - Oil Service HLDRS - Buy - Final Trade part 1 USO - United States Oil Fund - Short - Final Trade part 2 NU - Nucor - Buy FCX - Freeport McMoRan - Buy DEO - Diageo - Buy MO - Altria - Buy BUD - Budweiser - Buy, “one of the biggest deals of all time”

Najarian: SCHW - Charles Schwab - Buy ABT - Abbott Labs - Buy C - Citigroup - Buy at $15 and sell an option SLB - Schlumberger - Keep an eye on it, it’s been beaten CHK - Chesapeake - Buy - Final Trade

Terranova: GIS - General Mills - Buy EOG - EOG Resources

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Global AnimalBiz Index The accompanying tables present an overview of the market cap-weighted Global AnimalBiz Index, which includes 32 companies with market caps between $100 million to $10 billion US Dollars. The index excludes all big pharma and diversified healthcare giants which have animal health segments such as Schering-Plough (Intervet), Novartis, Pfizer, Merck + Sanofi-Aventis joint venture (Merial), Wyeth (Fort Dodge), and Eli Lilly (Elanco). These companies are excluded to make the index more leveraged to animal care as this segment typically represents only about 5% of their sales. The Global AnimalBiz Index has performed in-line with benchmark funds for the healthcare sector over the past year with a market cap weighted return of -8.1% and an equally-weighted return of -9.4% ...