Better Buy: Geron vs. Incyte
Geron (NASDAQ: GERN) and Incyte (NASDAQ: INCY) live at opposite ends of the biotech spectrum. One company has no approved drug despite its best efforts. The other owns a drug garnering multiple approvals from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). One biotech earns de minimis revenue and scrapes by through continually raising money to fund operations. The other boasts sales of more than $1.6 billion. Biotech investors can learn lessons from the divergent trajectories these companies endured.
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Geron has yet to deliver an approved drug despite nearly 30 years focused on an area of biology called telomeres and telomerase. Telomeres are protective caps on DNA, and each time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter. Eventually, the telomeres become critically short, preventing cell division and causing cell death. Telomerase, a naturally occurring enzyme, prevents telomeres from shrinking, thus allowing the cells to continue dividing.
Source Fool.com
