Biotech Mailbag: Bad CEOs Offer Lessons

Back to Pien. Many of the questions above can't be answered in the affirmative when it comes to his tenure as Medarex's CEO. I sat in a breakout room last fall at an investor conference with several large Medarex shareholders who tried in vain to get Pien to discuss in any detail the potential upside to Medarex from Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ Quote) promising psoriasis drug Stelara. (The drug uses antibody technology from Medarex.)

It seemed as if Pien was going out his way to be evasive, which made no sense because these were friendly shareholders asking the questions.

I agree with much of Gerry's defense of Medarex, but to be successful moving forward, I think Medarex has to demonstrate to investors that it can develop drugs on its own, and not just be a technology licensing machine. Can Pien make that happen? I'm not so sure.

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Moving on to an email from Jon S. regarding Curis (CRIS Quote).

"At the last big cancer conference, you applauded Curis and its partner Genentech for their work with the hedgehog pathway. Do you still recommend Curis in light of the current market?"

Poor Curis. The stock performed well right before and after the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting last June. Since then, it's been tough, with the stock falling from near $2 a share to around 80 cents today.

This fall has more to do with the lousy market and an unfortunate lack of near-term catalysts for Curis than any misgivings or problems with the company and its drug GDC-0449. (For those interested, the hedgehog pathway is not a track in the grass created by the spiny mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, but a regulator of cellular growth that when abnormally activated is thought to be implicated in the progression of certain cancers.)