medicine

Companies producing so-called “plantibodies,” or plant-produced antibodies created by genetic engineering, have been attracting headlines recently. San Diego-based Mapp Pharmaceutical, which was acquired last year by Allergan (NYSE: AGN), has gotten global attention over the...

We’re waist-deep into the earnings season, and many companies have already filed. The U.S. biotech firm Celgene Corp (NASDAQ: CELG) has filed as well, and its reported earnings beat Wall Street’s expectations. Here are some takeaways from the report. Earnings Overview Revenues...

Merck (NYSE: MRK) is a blue chip "Big Pharma" stock that is up for the last week, month, quarter, six months and year of market action. For 2014, Merck has risen by nearly 19 percent. There are three reasons for long-term investors to buy shares of Merck in expectation that the share...

The health care sector has been on fire in 2014, as investors continue to bet on the development of new drugs and increased need for medical services. On Tuesday, the pharmaceuticals industry received a vote of confidence, after both Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) and Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK)...

Short interest can be a very telling component of investor and trader sentiment toward a stock. High or rising short interest typically means that investors and traders believe a stock is going to drop or continue a current decline further. However, high short interest can also be viewed as a...

Mixed news came out this week on research into Alzheimer's.   New studies suggest the rate of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia is dropping in the United States and other developed countries. Meanwhile, Big Pharma's years-long battle to find a treatment, if not a cure,...

The Nasdaq Composite got hammered Tuesday. The Russell was also slammed pretty hard. The Russell, in particular, broke a key trendline of support, which implies more selling to come. And if you’ve been in the market this year then Tuesday's price action reminds you of March and April...

The business of chain drugstores has been a veritable model for how just about any retail business should envision itself. Over the past 75 years, chain drugstores have seen staggeringly consistent growth while becoming an increasingly pervasive part of America's cultural landscape. With...

This month marks 33 years since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on a rare lung infection affecting a group of gay men – one of the first known medical mentions of what later became known as the AIDS outbreak. The World Health Organization says that, over...

One of the best performers in the incredible bull run for the market has been the biotech sector. Many of the stocks in the sector have doubled, tripled, quadrupled and, in the case of Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB), decupled (ten times) in price. BIIB, which bottomed in Nov. 2008 ($37.21) and peaked...

Biotech stocks have been one of the hottest sectors of the market over the last several years and many exchange traded funds have benefitted greatly from their success. The two largest ETFs in this space are the iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology ETF (NASDAQ: IBB) and SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (NYSE:...

When looking to make an investment, some investors might look to get into what’s “in” or what’s “hot.” This is why gold has recently been on an amazing bull run (which is now effectively over), and why housing was hot before it. Much of this can be seen as a...

A bribery scandal in China is forcing GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) to review all of its business practices, The Financial Times reported. Four of GlaxoSmithKline's top Chinese executives have been arrested and dozens more questioned in an ongoing corruption investigation. Chinese police allege...

If you have a school-age child, you probably know how serious the issue of food allergies -- and an allergic reaction -- can be. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 88 percent of the nation's schools have one or more students with a serious food allergy – a health...