Biotech's best bets.

Investors Chronicle, November, 2006

If your fingertips are still burning from your brush with online gambling, steel yourself. It's fair to say that picking biotechnology stocks can often feel like playing the roulette wheel, too. That's because it's impossible to know whether a new drug that scientific boffins are developing will ever gain approval. The statistics speak for themselves.

With the soaring cost of regulation, it now takes up to $1.2bn to take a new drug from the test tube to the market, and only one in 10 products will be a success. There can also be plenty of hot air from companies about what they ...