EPIX Pharmaceuticals Makes a Significant Altzheimer's Discovery

EPIX Pharmaceuticals (EPIX) is a bio-pharmaceutical company that is focused on discovering and developing novel therapeutics through the use of its proprietary and highly efficient silico drug discovery platform. Last week, the company made a huge breakthrough relating to Alzheimer’s. As we all know some of the greatest inventions were stumbled upon accidentally. We all know about Ben Franklin, and what happened when chocolate met peanut butter - the rest is history.

It is just possible that what EPIX stumbled upon is extremely important to humanity.

The company initiated a phase 2A study of its Alzheimer’s disease drug, PRX-03140, to get safety and tolerability information. What happened? The company actually found that the drug had a profound impact on the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale cognitive subscale. While it usually takes drugs between 12 and 24 weeks to show an improvement, after only 2 weeks with PRX-03140, sufferers showed a marked improvement.

Even the CEO was surprised by the findings. Epix Chief Executive Officer Michael Kauffman said the company was surprised by the compound’s swift effectiveness.

“No drug has been shown to work this quickly, as far as we are aware,” said Kauffman, adding that other Alzheimer’s drugs generally must be taken for at least 12 weeks before any significant improvement can be observed.

With 5 million Americans Alzheimer’s the opportunity for EPIX is huge. It is also important to consider that with an aging population this could be absolutely huge for the little Biotech company with a market-cap of only $141 million.

After seeing the stock surge more than 50% on the news, it has fallen way back. With this potential revolutionary, blockbuster drug, this is a stock that should be trading much higher than the $4 range. For investors looking to take a swing at an up and coming drug company, EPIX is worth the look.

Disclosure: The author’s fund holds no position in any stock mentioned as of December 21, 2007.