June should be national cancer month.

Each year around this time, oncology groups and Wall Street brokerages hold a rash of conferences where researchers reveal the latest, greatest potential cancer cures.

This year has been no exception. Above all, we learned about remarkable advances in two exciting cancer therapies and three great companies that will benefit.

Heres more detail. (Ive kept the technical language to a minimum.)

Tumors are smart. They know how to trick the immune system into missing them. But scientists are wising up to their tricks. In one evasive strategy, tumors release an enzyme that renders them invisible. If you block the enzyme, your immune system can find tumors and destroy them with the help from cancer drugs. This is the key to an early-stage cancer weapon you should invest in, known as IDO inhibitors.

IDO stands for Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase, an enzyme released by tumors to blind the bodys immune system. IDO is a strange drug target, because IDO inhibition by itself has no noticeable anti-cancer effect, says Tanguy Seiwert, a cancer-therapy researcher and medical doctor who teaches at the University of Chicago. Suppressing IDO, however, makes tumors vulnerable.

The best pure play in IDO inhibitors is a company whose shares I own, and have suggested since December 2011 in my stock newsletter, Brush Up on Stocks. Were up 750% in this company since 2011 ($14 to $120). But I think this stock is still a hold because there are bigger gains ahead.

Incyte Corp. INCY, +3.58% just released excellent data on its IDO inhibitor, called epacadostat, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference. In combination with cancer therapies from Merck & Co. MRK, +1.13% and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. BMY, +1.40% it showed excellent results against several kinds of cancer.

It looks really good. I think this was a coming-out party for IDO inhibitors, says Seiwert. Besides effectiveness, one of the main positives is that epacadostat is safe. This means it can be readily used to assist many other cancer drugs. You can add it to a ton of things because the cost is low, in terms of toxicity.

Incyte is an ideal biotech company for investors because it is self-funding. It has a very profitable drug called Jakafi, for a rare blood disorder, which supports research on new drugs like the IDO inhibitor. So investors dodge dilutive financings.

So why hasnt Incytes stock shot up? Investors have three main worries. But they look like false fears.

One bit of fake news circulating is that Incyte showed success, in part, only because it omitted patients from some results, which drove up the percentage of success stories. But this is a dubious critique for two reasons. Even if you included the three patients left out, it would only lower the success rate by a few percentage points, notes J.P. Morgan analyst Cory Kasimov. Second, Incyte offered several separate data sets showing success in many types of cancer, but the omission only affected one subgroup, says Seiwert. I think this was way overblown.

The next fear: Competitor NewLink Genetics Corp. NLNK, +3.27% recently announced Roche AG RHHBY, +0.21% handed back development rights to its IDO, following lousy results in a Roche study. Some investors take this as a sign that IDO is malarkey. But William Blair analyst Katherine Xu thinks this is bullish for Incyte, since it signals a competitor may be gone. NewLinks IDO may have fared poorly because it works differently than Incytes IDO, or because Roche used an extremely sick patient population. Neither scenario reflects poorly on Incyte.

The third knock on Incyte is the one to watch. While Seiwert is impressed with Incytes IDO results, he points out the Phase II results are early-stage, and longer-term studies are needed to learn more about patient survival. Those studies are in the works. Incyte has nine Phase III studies planned with Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb, says Xu. The outcomes here are key, since about $50 worth of the current $120 Incyte stock price is linked to IDO.

In another key advance in cancer therapy in the past two years, doctors have learned how to extract a patients blood and genetically tweak white blood cells so they override evasive tactics used by tumors.

Then the cells are reproduced in a lab to expand the supply, and put back in the patients body so they can move in for the kill. Hopefully, the cells then continue to proliferate and thrive and stay on hand to fight any more cancer that comes along.

Known as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CAR-T), this approach has produced remarkable results against blood cancers in patients who otherwise had almost no hope of survival. CAR-T works by unblocking cancer cell receptors normally sought out by the immune system.

This is one of the most exciting therapies in immunotherapy, said Jae Park, a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center cancer researcher and medical doctor, at the Jefferies 2017 Global Healthcare Conference in early June.

Probably the best pure play here is Kite Pharma Inc. KITE, +1.64% At the Jefferies conference, Kite CEO Arie Belldegrun showed images of a patients body riddled with tumors, which disappeared about a month after treatment began. The patient showed no sign of the disease a year later.

Kite has a product coming on the market by the end of this year, and probably many more on the way, says Brad Loncar, the cancer research expert behind the Loncar Cancer Immunotherapy CNCR, +2.93% exchange traded fund. This is pretty good progress for a therapy that was considered science fiction two years ago.

I suggested Kite in my stock letter at around $71 on May 17, and I think its still a hold even though it has already risen to $87, because this promises to be a blockbuster therapy. At the time, insiders were big buyers as the stock sold off on news of the death of a patient in one of its studies.

That unfortunate death highlights one of the key risks here. CAR-T patients have died because the therapy can cause brain swelling. Doctors are getting better at staving off adverse side effects, says Park. But they still dont fully understand what causes them, which should raise a yellow flag for investors.

Kite also faces competition from other companies developing CAR-T, including power players like Novartis AG NVS, +0.75% Pfizer Inc. PFE, +0.76% Johnson & Johnson JNJ, -0.21% and GlaxoSmithKline PLC GSK, -0.09% as well as Juno Therapeutics Inc. JUNO, +3.91% Cellectis SA CLLS, +0.00% Adaptimmune Therapeutics PLC ADAP, -0.44% and two privately held companies called Poseida Therapeutics and Nanjing Legend Biotech.

Any of these efforts may pan out nicely, but my pick as a third CAR-T play is bluebird bio BLUE, +3.59% which is partnering with Celgene Corp. CELG, +2.29% Bluebird just announced really impressive results for its CAR-T candidate called bb2121. In early studies, just released at ASCO, this therapy produced an overall response rate of 90% to 100% among hospice-type patients whose cancer was so bad that seven different attempts to cure them, on average, had failed.

To generate efficacy data on this level with an overall very tolerable safety profile is highly impressive, says Kasimov, at J.P. Morgan. With more key updates to come in 2017, we would continue to add to positions in bluebird bio.

At the time of publication, Michael Brush held INCY. Brush has suggested INCY and KITE in his stock newsletter Brush Up on Stocks. Brush is a Manhattan-based financial writer who has covered business for the New York Times and The Economist group, and he attended Columbia Business School in the Knight-Bagehot program.

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Opinion: Three must-own cancer stocks for your biotechnology portfolio - MarketWatch

Sifelani Tsiko recently in Lilongwe, Malawi

An industrial development strategy could be built on the back of Africas agricultural sector underpinned by the adoption of new and emerging technologies such as biotechnology to support improved yields, value addition and services that feed into the whole agro-processing value chain, a top Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) official says.

Getachew Belay, a senior biotechnology policy advisor told Zimpapers Syndication recently on the sidelines of a communication training workshop for journalists on biotechnology and biosafety, that the adoption of genetically modified cotton developed using a bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) which naturally produces a chemical harmful only to a small fraction of insects such as the bollworm, could increase yields and enhance competitiveness.

He says cotton farmers in Africa suffer huge losses due to pest problems.

The most destructive of pests is the African bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), which can cause severe losses of up to 100 percent like we saw on some cotton fields in Salima here in Malawi, the Comesa biotech policy advisor says.

In unprotected fields pest damage can be very severe and when you look at Bt cotton crop on trial you can see hope that its possible for African farmers to increase their yields and competitiveness of their crop on the market.

Using Bt cotton developed using bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which naturally produces a chemical harmful only to a small fraction of insects such as the bollworm, experts say reduction in pest infestations can increase yields and improve the livelihoods of cotton growers.

The Bt toxin is inserted into cotton, causing cotton, called Bt cotton, to produce this natural insecticide in its tissues.

Biotechnology experts argue that cotton farmers in Zimbabwe, Malawi and most other African countries, can effectively reduce input costs and control damage from bollworms and other insects that frequently damage cotton by adopting Bt cotton.

For several decades, has lagged behind in terms of the industrial dynamism required to boost farmer earnings, employment, economic growth and competitiveness on the global market.

But in recent years, there is a growing realisation of the importance of industrialisation.

In 2016, the UNs Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) published a major report on industrialization in Africa where it asserts that structural transformation in Africas economies remains the highest priority and industrialization is the top strategy for achieving it in practice.

And, Belay says, biotechnology is one of the major tools for achieving industrialisation.

Im convinced that biotechnology has many opportunities to drive Africas industrialisation, he says.

We have Bt cotton, Bt maize and soya and biotechnology can enhance the competitiveness of our crops and agricultural products especially when it comes to value addition and beneficiation as it was stipulated in our African industrialisation agenda.

Already we are seeing the benefits of adopting biotech crops in South Africa. Livestock feed sectors in Zambia and even Zimbabwe cannot compete with SAs GM stock feed which is produced cheaply. We need to adopt this new technology to cut costs.

Europe relies heavily on GM soya for its livestock feed industry and this has enhanced its competitiveness.

Africa has a low uptake of biotech food crops due to lack of awareness and stiff resistance, scientists say.

International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) AfriCenter director Margaret Karembu told journalists at the workshop that adoption of agricultural biotechnology has lagged behind compared to the rapid rates seen in the medical and health sectors.

Where are we as Africans? This is the question, we need to think seriously about the good work (on agricultural biotechnology) going on in our labs, she said. What is our place in the global biotechnology space? We need reclaim it and improve the livelihoods of our farmers across the continent.

Karembu said lack of awareness and a constrained regulatory environment had also slowed down the uptake of agricultural biotechnology.

Lack of awareness of the benefits and the regulatory framework has affected the tide towards the adoption of biotechnology. The victim mentality has been largely to blame for this.

We think of ourselves as victims of the technology. The fact is that our public institutions and universities have been doing research on biotech crops for years and this has not moved to the commercialization stage, she says. She says Africa needs to diffuse myths and misconceptions around GMO crops.

The media has a big role to play in clearing some of the misconceptions about biotechnology and GMOs, the ISAAA director says.

When media demonises the science, it becomes difficult to correct the mistakes. There is a lot of unfamiliarity with the technology and having fixed mind sets will not help our struggling farmers.

The farmers you saw in Salima are poor and they are struggling. Why should we block them from accessing the Bt cotton varieties that can significantly boost their yields and income? Farming should not be for leisure, its a business and it should be there to improve the quality of livelihoods of the farmers.

Biotechnology is one of the tools we can use to first of all improve crop yields and secondly to support Africas industrialisation goals for value addition and beneficiation.

Karembu urged the media to encourage dialogue and to correct misinformation.

The information we generate should be guided by credible scientific evidence and not unverified Google information, she says. If you have a headache people just Google and Google has become the answer. The world is polluted by a lot of unsubstantiated facts. We need to change the narrative and challenge the myth that Africa enjoys being poor the romanticisation of poverty.

Stringent and expensive regulatory process in Africa has slowed down uptake of biotechnology crops.

Biotech experts say the regulatory process is burdensome and makes everything unpredictable while in some African countries there is fear of change and challenging of the status quo when it comes to biotechnology.

According to ISAAA, the production of biotech crops increased 110-fold from 1996 with countries now growing the crops on 2,1 billion hectares worldwide.

The global value of the biotech seed market alone was US$15,8 billion in 2016. A total of 26 countries, 19 developing and 7 industrial grew biotech crops.

By 2016, at least four countries in Africa had in the past placed a GM crop on the market. These included Egypt, South Africa, Burkina Faso and Sudan.

But due to some temporary setback in Burkina Faso and Egypt, only South Africa and Sudan planted biotech crops on 2,8 million hectares

South Africa is one of the top 10 countries planting more than one million hectares in 2016 and continued to lead the adoption of biotech crops on the African continent.

Kenya, Malawi and Nigeria have transitioned from research to granting environmental release approvals while six others Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Swaziland and Uganda made significant progress towards completion of multi-location trials in readiness for considering commercial approval, ISAAA reported.

But the road to the adoption of Bt cotton technologies in Africa still faces stiff resistance.

Supporters of GM crops have to grapple with vocal anti-GMO activists, limited capacity to deal with the processing of GM research applications, bureaucratic delays in approving field trials, mistrust and resistance from key decision makers in Government and limited public awareness of the issues surrounding research and development of GM crops.

In addition, they have to contend with issues related to disease resistance, bottlenecks encountered when co-ordinating with other line ministries, trade-related restrictions, biosafety regulation and the overwhelming influence of multinational companies, Governments and their sidekicks NGOs. And, despite the threats, biotechnology experts say benefits from the biotech agro-linked industrial development outweigh the threats.

SADC drew up its Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap which seeks to speed up industrialisation by strengthening the comparative and competitive advantages of the economies of the region.

The strategy which covers the period 2015 2063 is anchored on three pillars industrialisation, competitiveness and regional industrialisation.

The whole industrialisation agenda aims to help SADC member states to achieve high levels of economic growth, competitiveness, incomes and employment.

To access the funds, SADC countries have set up committees made up of government and private sector players to identify priority areas for funding.

At regional level, three areas have been prioritised, namely agro processing, mining and downstream processing.

For all this, biotechnology could be a useful tool to drive the regions industrialisation agenda, Belay says.

Its not a silver bullet, but its one of the many tools we can use to drive the continents industrialisation strategy. Agriculture is fundamental to Comesa member states in terms of improving food and nutrition security, increasing rural income, employment and contributions to GDP and expert earnings.

We need to explore ways of enhancing the use of biotechnology to drive industrialisation and improved livelihoods for farmers in Africa.

Analysts say Africa badly needs increased investment in infrastructure of all kinds reliable clean energy and water systems, medical clinics, technical colleges, railways, roads, bridges, fiber optic networks, and factories of many kinds.

Industrialisation can benefit the expansion of intra-African trade by supporting a more diversified export economy, wrote an economic analyst.

In particular, the development of rural and food processing industries could help to lift significant numbers from poverty. But, to facilitate trade in goods and services, it is essential to reduce distribution costs by improving and expanding road, rail and other communication infrastructure. -Zimpapers Syndication

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Biotechnology could spur Africa's industrialisation - Southern Times Africa

On eve of biotech's big convention, BIO boss talks drug prices, 'biosimilars' and Trump BioFlash podcast San Francisco Business Times As 16,000 biotech executives land in San Diego this week for the annual Biotechnology Innovation Organization conference, old issues continue to simmer while new ones emerge with the rise of President Donald Trump. The BIO convention, which runs ... The BIO International Convention Kicks Off Four Days of Breakthrough Programming in San DiegoBusiness Wire (press release) all 3 news articles »

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On eve of biotech's big convention, BIO boss talks drug prices, 'biosimilars' and Trump BioFlash podcast - San Francisco Business Times

Dustin Rhoads of Trumann is participating in Biotechnology Research Internship at Arkansas Biosciences Institute. (Photo provided)

Five Arkansas State University students are pursuing their interest in science this summer through the Biotechnology Research Internship Program at the Arkansas Biosciences Institute (ABI) facility on campus. One of those students, Dustin Rhoads, is from Trumann.

The program provides basic support for A-State undergraduate science majors who want research experience in life sciences or applications of life sciences during the summer of their sophomore or junior years.

Each student is matched with a faculty mentor who is conducting research related to biotechnology or biology from one of several departments and colleges, based largely on the student's interests. Selection also is based on academic credentials.

The students, along with their future plans and comments from their applications are:

Dustin Rhoads plans to go to dental school after completing his degree at A-State. His faculty mentor also is Dr. Malathi Srivatsan.

"I chose to apply for this internship mostly because of my interest in the field," Rhoads said. "Neurology has always been and interest of mine. Furthermore, the research we are doing at Dr. Srivatsan's Lab could be used to help so many people. Neuroregeneration could impact the lives of millions, and to be a part of something that could do that is very special to me. What sparked my interest in science was the way it's completely unique from all other academic fields, it has no sense of complacency, and is forever evolving. Im the kind of person who would rather study how things work as opposed to memorizing hard set facts, so the sciences are definitely for me regarding that aspect. I chose Arkansas State University because growing up I was always around it, almost developing it as a second home before even leaving high school, also accompanied with the report of its programs, made it a complete match for me."

The other students are Madalyn Rose Weiner of Little Rock, Oliver Dozier of Paragould, Kayleigh Nelson of Marion, and Aylin Villalpa-Arroyo of Hidalgo, Mexico.

Each internship is valued at $2,500. The students work 20 hours per week for 10 weeks. An additional $500 is provided to the supporting laboratory for research supplies.

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Trumann student starting ABI biotechnology research internship - Democrat Tribune