Biotech Stocks Different In The US And The UK

Biotechnology analysts in the USA have watched incredulously as the UK biotechnology sector has climbed to new heights, say UK-based Morgan Stanley analysts, Duncan Moore and Eric Hecht.

The UK's biotechnology sector has performed extraordinarily well this year. The news flow has been positive, and some bad news has been absorbed as well. An example of this is Celltech, which withdrew an orally-active asthma compound, CDP 840, which it was developing with its US partner, Merck & Co (Marketletter February 12). There was some negligible impact on the rest of the group "despite the baying for blood by the financial press," comment the analysts.

There will be inevitable disappointment in the sector somewhere, they say, and this may dampen some of the uncritical enthusiasm that they detect in the market.