Biotech Industry Market Cap: $376.94 billion (down 0.52 percent for the week ending 1/28/11)

Biotech remains in negative territory
Geopolitical uncertainty derailed the capital markets and stocks suffered their biggest one-day loss in nearly six months as anti-government rioting in Egypt caused investors to move to less risky assets to help ride out the situation. The Dow recorded its first negative performance after eight weeks of gains, closing down 0.4 percent. The Nasdaq closed the week down just 0.1 percent.

The Burrill Biotech Select Index remained in negative territory this week falling almost 2 percent to record its second straight weekly loss. Leading the decliners was Celgene, which fell 8.6 percent despite reporting a 38 percent increase in 2010 revenues and continuing sustained growth in its year-end financials. Amgen dropped 2.9 percent as it announced that it will pay as much as $1 billion to acquire BioVex, the creator of a late-stage cancer vaccine that has shown encouraging results in treating solid tumors. BioVex is running late-stage pivotal trials to evaluate use of the experimental vaccine, called OncoVex, for the treatment of melanoma and head and neck cancer. If successful, the vaccine could be sold within "the next few years" says Roger Perlmutter, Amgen's head of research and development.

The only bright spot for the Select Index group was Exelixis, which jumped 15 percent. The FDA granted orphan drug designation to XL184 for treatment of follicular, medullary, and anaplastic thyroid carcinoma, and metastatic or locally advanced papillary thyroid cancer. A pivotal phase 3 trial of XL184 is ongoing in patients with medullary thyroid cancer and the company expects to release top-line phase 3 results in the first-half of 2011 and potentially file a New Drug Application for the compound in the second-half of 2011.