Zacks.com Announces That Lon Juricic Highlights the Following Stocks: ISTA Pharma, Kosan Biosciences, Immune Response Corp., Human Genome Sciences, and Paradigm Genetics.

CHICAGO -- The biotech industry is suffering through the summer slowdown right now, but Lon Juricic has some under-represented companies that could be good therapy for your portfolio. Learn about several eye-opening picks in this featured expert. Read about ISTA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISTA), Kosan Biosciences (NASDAQ:KOSN), Immune Response Corporation (NASDAQ:IMNR), Human Genome Sciences (NASDAQ:HGSI), and Paradigm Genetics (NASDAQ:PDGM). Lon Juricic is editor of the BioTech Insider newsletter. Click here for the full story exclusively on Zacks.com: http://at.zacks.com/?id=84

Here are the highlights from the Featured Expert column:

Updated Positions

ISTA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISTA) is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of unique and uniquely improved ophthalmic products. ISTA's products seek to address serious diseases and conditions of the eye such as vitreous hemorrhage, diabetic retinopathy, hyphema, glaucoma, ocular pain and inflammation.

ISTA currently has four product candidates each of which are in various stages of development. On June 7th, ISTA announced FDA approval of Istalol for glaucoma, which is the company's second FDA approval; the company announced FDA approval for Vitrase as a spreading agent in May. ITSA is expected to launch Istalol within the next few months and said, based on NDC Health data, it estimates that the U.S. pharmaceutical market for the treatment of glaucoma exceeds $1.1 billion per year, and that the U.S. ophthalmic beta-blocker market exceeds $170 million per year, with over 4.4 million prescriptions written annually.

Because of the company's successful navigation of the FDA system, its undiscovered status, and the numerous positive catalysts, Lon Juricic believes ISTA represents a major opportunity for risk adverse biotech investors.

Kosan Biosciences (NASDAQ:KOSN) has two lead clinical programs: KOS-862 and 17-AAG. Both compounds are derived from an important class of natural products known as polyketides. By applying its gene engineering technologies to generate proprietary polyketide analogs and by increasing the production yields of polyketides, Kosan has created a pipeline of product candidates for cancer, as well as for infectious disease and other therapeutic areas.

With approximately $101.2 million in cash and investments and a market-cap that has deteriorated to $165 million, Juricic feels investors, including the important institutional type, will start looking at Kosan again shortly. Juricic feels the recent sell-off in shares of KOSN has created an excellent buying opportunity for long-term investors. He is still confident in the long-term prospects for cancer treatment KOS-862 and the company's clinical and pre-clinical pipeline is very strong.

Other stocks in the current portfolio include:

Immune Response Corporation (NASDAQ:IMNR) is a biopharmaceutical company developing immune-based therapies to induce specific T cell responses for the treatment of HIV, autoimmune diseases and cancer.

Human Genome Sciences (NASDAQ:HGSI) is a pharmaceutical company that has created a new paradigm for drug discovery. They are in the discovery and clinical development of their own drugs.

Paradigm Genetics (NASDAQ:PDGM) is industrializing the process of gene function determination for major sectors of the global economy: nutrition, crop production, industrial products, and human health.

Learn a lot more about ISTA Pharmaceuticals and Kosan Biosciences from Lon Juricic, and take a look at all of the stocks in his current portfolio, by clicking: http://at.zacks.com/?id=85

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