GENVEC

At the request of a subscriber to my newsletter ChangeWave Biotech Investor www.changewave.com, I visited with GenVec (GNVC) during a major investment conference in New York last week. GenVec is an old fashioned technology driven biotech company -- they have a core technology platform for building gene based drugs and vaccines and push this into various treatments and vaccines, which is a more expensive path than focusing on a single market or disease but fairly common in the life sciences and biotech industries.

Without getting into too much technical detail, their Phase III cancer drug for pancreatic cancer has done well in early trials and interim data should be available mid-year. This kind of treatment is administered locally, applied directly to the pancreas, the drug being designed to stimulate anti-cancer proteins that will attack a tumor. Last month the company received approval from the FDA to include in this trial an endoscope based application of the treatment -- through a tube pushed down the digestive system of a patient.

This cancer treatment is in earlier stage trial for other forms of cancer and is extensively to most kinds of solid tumor cancers.

Their vaccine business is moving along as well in part due to heavy funding by Uncle Sam and they have programs for malaria, HIV, flu and avian flu. Most of the development for vaccines is "cost free" to the company but they retain rights to the products, although they will have to license them at reasonable terms if approved several years from now.

I need to think about this one -- but the interim results from their pancreatic cancer treatment were encouraging, this form of cancer is almost always fatal, and the FDA gives a lot of leeway to companies working on treatments for these kinds of deadly cancers. Come back and visit or look for more discussion in ChangeWave Biotech Investor at www.changewave.com.