3D Spheriod Cancer Cell Culture

The hot thing now in biotech/pharma discovery research is trying to recreate the tumor micro-environment.

Everyone has/knows matrigel. It's the "3D" culture vessel of choice; which is basically a cocktail of growth factors and basement membrane adherent factors that promote cell growth in non adherent conditions and preventing apoptosis.

We want to study how the tumor grows and how we can get a targeted drug inside that tumor. In vitro, we use siRNA technology to "knock down" the protein e.g., to prevent the protein's function to study it's biology in it's absence. In 3D cell culture this allows us to recreate mini microenvironments to test new drugs.

A 3D cell culture spheroid using matrigel.

3-D tumor biology: A new stance on in vitro drug design?

A taste to see what's coming. Is the wave of the future in drug design using 3D cell culture models? Does this really mimic the tumor microenvironment?
this is a spheroid tumor growing in a 3D cultue system.
Many questions...can a drug get inside? What is the micro-environment? pH? We can answer these questions. stay tuned!

BioTech hot most watched stocks as of 8-26-2011

Here is a list of the most watched stocks today

The 15 Most-Watched Biotech Stock

People watch stocks for different reasons -- they're waiting for a dip in price, watching for a specific catalyst, gathering all the news and information that might affect stocks they already own, or considering a sell. Regardless of their motivation, we can better understand market sentiment by seeing who's watching what. With the Fool's free My Watchlist service, we have tens of thousands of people telling us the businesses that have, for whatever reason, piqued their interest.

The most-watched biotech stock is ...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD ) is above the rest in terms of watch interest, the percentage of people keeping an eye on biotech stocks in general who are specifically watching each company. And for good reason. As CAPS Member CarolinaMatt wrote last week:

Yes I get it. This company is no longer the high-flying early stage pharma star with a everything under patent and profits growing as fast as it can ramp distribution.

But this is no old super-slow moving huge pharma company either. Pricing is at a 2011 P/E of about 9X which suggests maturity and minimal EPS growth. But this company is still projected to grow EPS at 15ish% over the next 3-5 years. Even if they fall short and come in at more like 10-11% EPS gains it is a bargain in the drug space

Here are the rest of the top 15 most-watched companies in the industry with their watch interest along with the stocks' CAPS rating to show the sentiment of our investing community.

	Company	Market Cap (millions)	CAPS Rating (out of 5)	Watch Interest
1	Gilead Sciences	$33,828	****	25.5%
2	Exelixis (Nasdaq: EXEL )	$1,451	****	9.3%
3	Amgen	$49,495	***	2.8%
4	Dendreon (Nasdaq: DNDN )	$5,444	**	2.6%
5	ImmunoGen	$611	***	2.4%
6	Maxygen	$157	****	2.2%
7	MannKind (Nasdaq: MNKD )	$491	**	2.0%
8	PDL BioPharma (Nasdaq: PDLI )	$827	****	1.8%
9	Celgene	$26,639	****	1.8%
10	Geron (Nasdaq: GERN )	$661	***	1.7%
11	Vertex Pharmaceuticals	$9,728	***	1.5%
12	Arena Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ARNA )	$184	**	1.5%
13	Human Genome Sciences	$5,165	**	1.4%
14	Orexigen Therapeutics	$138	**	1.4%
15	Biogen Idec	$17,626	***	1.1%

thanks fool.com

there is some interesting phase II data I will cover tomorrow.
Solid tumors and epigentics. I can give some info on that field--is epigenetics drugable?

Well, well look who decided to post.

Biotech, like everything else, has been taking it hard. There are still a few buyers out there though. Let's shuffle through some trials and see who is still a bull.

today: CELG

Revlimid is changing the how multiple myeloma (blood cancer) is being treated.

some background:
Lenalidomide (Revimid) is used to treat a type of blood disorder known as myelodysplastic syndrome. Lenalidomide is also used along with other drugs to treat people with the cancer known as multiple myeloma. CELG also has an impressive pipeline in oncology solid tumors that should see fruition in the next few years.
Revlimid is used in conjunction with an anti-inflammatory drug called dexamethasone in patients.

CELG closed up today in average trading (avg. volume ) up 64 cents to 54.32.