AN INTERVIEW WITH SUCCESSFUL ENTRE-PRENEUR AND INVESTOR MOULI COHENON HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PROM-ISING BIOTECH SECTOR AND WHAT RE-CENT DEVELOPMENTS MEAN FOR IN-VESTORS

Q: Will you see consolidation in the Biotech sector and can you find profits there?Mouli Cohen:

I think for major investors in mid-size Biotech companies, there is gonnabe great opportunity through the ongoing consolidation in the industry. Just a year agowe saw Eli Lilly win a bidding war with Bristol-Myers Squibb for ImClone, a prominent bi-otech company with several cancer drugs in its pipeline, with an offer of $6.5 billion andcompanies like GlaxoSmithKline have announced that they will be focusing more on bi-otech growth areas. The consolidation has only begun, so I think now is a great time tolook at the financials of some mid-majors that might be poised for purchase and get inbefore the buyouts take place.

Q: Does this new administration provide new opportunities in health care reformadminst?Mouli Cohen:

Health care reform is inevitable. With health care as the major issue of thisnew administration it is surely a sector to watch closely in the coming months for poten-tially massive opportunities. I believe that there will emerge multiple solutions, not theleast of which will be the implementation of telemedicine services (mobile/internet) thatwill effectuate orders of magnitude in savings and bring access to uninsured as well.

Q: What about other diseases like cancer and diabetes? Are there companies outthere making breakthroughs with their treatment that look promising to futurecommercial applications?Mouli Cohen:

There are some incredible advancements happening in this area on boththe academic and commercial side. With the recent lifting of ban on Stem cell research bythe new administration, there are enormous new opportunities to take human embryoniccells almost all the way to a beta cell. Combine this with some recent breakthrough’s atplaces like UCSF in the control over the immune system response should lead to highlyeffective drugs over the course of the next few years.An important consideration will bethe merging of silicon technology (artificial physiology that accurately mimics the truephysiology) and stem cell biology.

Q: What about the timing right now? Is it the right time for companies to bet bigon R&D?

Mouli Cohen:

In my opinion there is never a bad time to bet on smart R&D. If you havea great process in place, R&D can be the game changer for the majority of major players.It should be in the heart of our company at all times.If you look at firms like, Wyeth Biotech which struggled with its Alzheimer's drug, bapineu-zumab, they could have easily hurt the company, but they had plenty of other drugs in thepipeline including anti-inflammatory drugs to treatments for cancer, and they had alreadyproduced some of Wyeth's best-known, most-lucrative drugs, including the pneumococcalvaccine Prevnar ($2 billion in revenue per year) and rheumatoid-arthritis injection Enbrel($3.5 billion). If they had reduced their R&D they wouldn’t have those wins and wouldn’thave had a full pipeline to make up for the ones that missed the mark.

Q: What are the opportunities for biotech in Latin America?Mouli Cohen:

Latin American implications are substantial. The biotechnology industry'smassive move into the energy sector brings together major social and ecological issues inthe region, such as agrofuel promotion and genetically modified (GM) crops. Latin Amer-ican civil society's aspirations of land reform, environmental protection and food and en-ergy sovereignty are at stake.Biotechnology companies have become some of the main movers in promoting the use offarm crops like corn, soy, and sugar cane to make fuel as the public resistance to GMcrops has increased. To a certain degree they see this biotech industry sees its salvationin the production of GM agrofuels. By portraying GM crops as the answer to climatechange and resource depletion caused by fossil fuels, they hope to cast a more favorablelight on biotech plants. They have a lot at stake as big companies like Monsanto, for ex-ample, obtains 60% of its revenue from the sale of GM seeds.

Q: What about the opportunities in China? It has long been ignored, do you thinknow the time to get in?Mouli Cohen:

The Chinese Central Government is currently participating in a large effortto improve public health in China and so companies in this region that can contribute tothat effort are interesting look at. Sinovac is one of those examples as I see them as aprofitable China biopharmaceutical company that focuses on R&D, manufacturing andcommercialization of vaccines that protect against human infectious diseases In April2008, they received regulatory approvals in China for the production of their pandemic in-