Astrazenica or GSK

moneylover

well, funnily enough my daughter is a diabetes lead dietitian - I think that she would say betting the farm on insulin is fine for quite a while - lots of people don't even have pumps yet!
Thanks for the advice re drug company investment JohnnyBravo but I am a pretty new girl to investing and am sticking to the Uk at the moment.

JonnyBravo

atush wrote: »

of course, you are betting that diabetes will remain insulin based.

But given stem cell research and completely unexpected drug discoveries (such as cancer drugs being a possible cure for Alzheimers) you could be betting the farm on that income stream.

but given the ever fattening population (and ever increasing D type2) you could be on to a winner. Again only time will tell, but i am a stem cell girl.

Not at all.
For a start I'm not suggesting betting the farm.

Also IMO breakthroughs in such technology will be quickly bought up by big pharma and it's most likely to be bought up by players already strong in the marketplace. Certainly Sanofi have the brute force to buy anything they like. €8bn a year profit.

As far as existing technologies in diabetes, of course Novo are already diversified from insulin alone with liraglutide and Sanofi will join the party with lixisenatide and their new blood glucose monitoring devices.

All IMO of course.

IronWolf

moneylover wrote: »

well, for now then I will put both on my watchlist and wait and see how prices move, I dont have any feel for what i should pay for either

Bear in mind, I don't know about AZN but GSK spend a lot of money on share buybacks which is continually affecting the price.

Thats another benefit to GSK btw, they have a decent dividend yield, and on top of that have a large share buyback programme.

Ive held GSK for about 2 years and although their (adjusted) P/E ratio has barely moved (market still undervaluing imo) I'm up almost 30% because of the dividends and share buybacks.

Glen_Clark

IronWolf wrote: »

Oh dear, the fact that some tipster seems to agree with me is making me question whether I'm actually right or not

I suppose they have to be right sometimes.

Yes I also get worried when the financial journalists are recommending my shares. From what I remember they have been wrong more often that right. But they are not always wrong.

atush

I don't worry as I then expect short term price rises as their accolytes (or numpties whe reaad their paper) pile in w/o doing research lol. TBH, I only give it a pssing glance to see if their resoning follows mine.

atypical

moneylover wrote: »

I think that she would say betting the farm on insulin is fine for quite a while

Even if there were a stem cell breakthrough tomorrow, it would be optimistic to see it in patients within 10 years. Much likely a lot longer given that the current regulatory approval process is designed with small organic molecules in mind, whereas stem cells are biological.

But there most likely won't be a breakthrough tomorrow so we'll be relying on insulin for some time yet.

atush

Somtimes stem cell stuff moves faster, as it isn't drugs- not sure. I think it counts more as a human transplant. I did see an interesting show where a girl who was blinded in an acid attack got her sight back after SCT. Not sure when the initial research into this bit came along, but don't think it was over ten years ago.

anyway, you are right. It can take years, esp with new drugs. I am very interested to learn when they will start human trials of the drug Bexarotene for Alzh. The results on mice were more outstanding than any research I have seen in years % wise. And because the drug had human trials already as it has been approved for Cancer it will happen more quickly. The Japanese drug company Eisai bought the drug off the US one in 2006, and the patent is good til 2016 so they don't have much time to get in the extra profits. Maybe it is worth a punt if the drug is fast tracked for new uses as it has been used in patients for years.