Ebb & Flow

If there’s a silver lining in last week’s high profile clinical setback from Genentech (DNA), it’s that the biotech market held up fairly well in the face of the well publicized event. It wasn’t too long ago that a late-stage setback from a bellwether would take the entire sector down. But last week, the BioCentury 100 gained 2% even as DNA was shedding $1.27, or $657.7 million in value, on news that its Avastin anti-VEGF antibody failed in a Phase III study in relapsed metastatic breast cancer (see Product Development, A7).

The divergence was apparent at the outset, as the BioCentury 100 inched forward 0.6% while DNA dropped $3.11 (10%) to $28.89 on 14.7 million shares on Tuesday after its post-market announcement on Monday. Another positive sign is that DNA’s news did not trigger wholesale selling of other companies with angiogenesis compounds in development (see "No Effect"). ...