Everybody's free.......

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what to do with your life.

The Shots Heard Around The World

CTIX - 2013 Stock of the Year

The race to a $1 trillion market capitalization was all the rage amongst analysts as they clocked the growth rates of Google and Apple in recent months. That talk has cooled for the time being with the recent fall in value of both companies, but it does get one thinking about the possibilities and where better values might be for returns. The reality is that only the most elite companies could ever reach that valuation and making it there would only produce about a 70 percent return on Apple from its recent peaks. For Google, the returns would be in excess of 300 percent, but the stock price would need to climb from current levels of $670 a share to over $3,000 per share with its current structure.

Digging deeper shows that even a $100 billion market cap is quite rare in the grand picture with only about one-third of one percent of public companies trading in the U.S. markets achieving that mark. Reaching $10 billion is a daunting task, but far more realistic, with in excess of 500 companies cracking into that club and many more knocking at the door.

The best chance for success – and unparalleled ROI – is focusing on biotechnology companies. A look at a list of the biggest companies by market capitalization shows a myriad of biotech stocks. In fact, 6 of the top 50 companies (12 percent) in the U.S. by market cap are biotech, including 3 in the top 20 (15 percent). Of course, this excludes leading drug makers like Roche, Novartis and Merck because those $150-billion-market-cap companies are headquartered overseas, even though they trade on the U.S. markets.

Overall, there are about 20 U.S.-listed drug making companies that have broken above the $10 billion barrier for market capitalization with several others, such as Forest Laboratories (NYSE: FRX) that were recently sitting on the cusp.

Putting aside companies like Forest Labs, trying again to break back above $9 billion, there are other some smaller biotech’s, that have a strong chance to mushroom in value with their pipeline of products. In order to make prescient decisions in choosing a company, it is imperative to find the right field that can shoulder exponential growth. Pharmasset (formerly NASDAQ:VRUS) demonstrated the prowess of targeting an oral drug for Hepatitis C to compete with today’s standard of care, the injectable interferon, that can often times be poorly tolerated by patients. In mid-2007, shares of VRUS could be bought for $4 per share. As Pharmasset’s experimental drug, PSI-7977, moved through early stage and mid-stage clinical trials, shares rocketed to about $160 per share before a 2-for-1 forward split brought prices back down to $80 each. After another modest climb, Gilead acquired Pharmasset in November 2011 for $11 billion, or $137 per share…and the drug wasn’t even done with Phase II clinical trials. The ROI for shareholders in around $4 was a whopping 6,750 percent in four years. Incidentally, over the same period, Apple has produced a ROI of about 500 percent when it peaked about a month ago.

It’s this type of due diligence and foresight to hone-in on the most promising growth areas that has me looking at specific cancer areas of oncology for companies poised to experience Pharmasset-type of price movement. Why? Because cancer is still a leading global killer in dire need for new therapies – not simply reformulations of existing drugs – to destroy tumors. In order to meet the criteria, a company must be under $5 per share, have a unique product candidate that targets a large patient population to meet an area of unmet medical need and also have a strong pipeline that adds value through addressing additional indications. These characteristics will not only build share value on their own, but certainly grasp the attention of big biotechs for their starving pipelines.

There are several prospects that command attention, but limiting the list to companies already in clinical trials, the best candidate for a steady rise in share price potentially leading into an explosion is Beverly, Massachusetts-based Cellceutix Corporation (OTCBB: CTIX).

Cellceutix is young company that slips past many big board players, but offers one of the largest upsides of any traditional drugmaker because of the uniqueness of its flagship drug. The first doses in clinical trials of Kevetrin™, the company’s flagship anti-cancer compound, are now being administered at the vaunted Harvard University Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and partner Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Kevetrin™ is no ordinary cancer drug. Its Mechanism of Action (MOA) acts upon the crucial tumor suppressing protein p53, referred to as “The Guardian and of the Human Genome” because its job as master regulator of the cell cycle. In nearly every cancer case, p53 is disrupted in its duty to induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) and shunt cancer cells from dividing uncontrollably.

The clinical trials at Dana-Farber and Beth Israel are evaluating Kevetrin™ against a wide array of solid tumors. Where many companies have to try and delineate a cancer line that their drug may prove a therapeutic benefit, Cellceutix is afforded the luxury of a basket of tumor strains because muted p53 activity is a culprit in nearly every type of cancer. That type of potential is unmatched by any peer.

Kevetrin™ has been extensively researched in the lab against many different cancer lines, including breast, lung, colon, leukemia, prostate and more, for which the company can boast the drug outstripped controls in slowing tumor growth and shrinking tumor sizes in each. The reason for the strong results stems from the MOA which shows Kevetrin™ helps p53 re-assume its normal function as a tumor destroyer. This opens the door for Kevetrin™ to become a front-line defense for any cancer diagnosis if the data is replicated in humans. As it stands, the stock seems undervalued at 95 cents, but when preliminary data starts to stream in from Dana-Farber and Beth Israel, the stock should see substantial, rapid appreciation in value.

Kevetrin™ is also readying to undergo additional studies being funded by Beth Israel in combination with Pfizer multikinase inhibitor drugs as potential new therapies for renal cancer and melanoma. Moreover, Cellceutix announced that a major university in Europe has approached them to sponsor and host additional research on Kevetrin targeting leukemia in combination with drugs from one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. That protocol for clinical trials is being written currently, according to Cellceutix. Trials could commence as soon as the first quarter of 2013.

Two major pharmas? Some of the world’s foremost cancer hospitals? Major players approaching Cellceutix and offering to pay to run clinical trials? These are very rare happenings and outwardly validate the potential for this small company’s new drug.

Adding to its pipeline in development, Cellceutix is having its anti-psoriasis drug, Prurisol, formulated by Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories (NYSE: RDY) for a Phase II clinical trial late Q1/early Q2 next year. Psoriasis trials are generally pretty brief (either the drug works or it doesn’t), so data from that clinical research could arrive by the start of the second half of 2012. Lab studies produced stellar results showing Prurisol eliminated virtually any trace of psoriatic tissue in animal models comparing Prurisol to methotrexate, a standard of care today. Prurisol making it to market is another multi-billion dollar proposition for Cellceutix.

Given the shallow pipelines of major pharmaceutical companies, Cellceutix is a premier early-stage acquisitions. They have a connection with Pfizer already and have relationships with other major pharma as evidenced through Non-Disclosure Agreements. Merger and acquisition activity in the biotechnology space is soaring in 2012 and analysts expect the pace to quicken as patent cliffs are sucking revenues from the world’s leading drug makers. Shareholders may not even want Cellceutix to be an acquisition target as the valuation is too low at this moment. As the company continues to develop its pipelines, the valuation should rise on its own and accommodate merger activity at much higher future prices.

When it comes to sheer, raw upside potential, Cellceutix is a standout and possesses the type of headroom for growth that will soon command investor and analyst attention. Others can chase Google and Apple, but the bigger plays are in biotech; you just have to know which one.

TAGS: Apple, Beth Israel, Google, ROI

Does anyone know where the love of God goes?

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
if they'd put fifteen more miles behind 'er.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the "Maritime Sailors' Cathedral."
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call "Gitche Gumee."
"Superior," they said, "never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early!"

Things Have Changed

People are crazy, times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed.

GEORGE MCGOVERN DIES; LOST 1972 PRESIDENTIAL BID

George McGovern dies; would have saved 35,000 American lives, my friends, peers, classmates, my generation.....had he been elected President in 1972.

Harvest Moon

October, the last wave goodbye of summer. Every memory I have begins here. Sweet comfort, warm jackets, hands-holding as we walk. Once ahead, is now behind. Always remembered, beneath the harvest moon.

I think its going to rain today

Andy Williams - RIP

As I watch icons of my youth pass, I am reminded not of events, or people, or my life from that time. Instead, feelings once real, then lost and forgotten, return as if they were inside of me all of these years. They are my friends. My best friends.

"Moon River" is a song composed by Johnny Mercer (lyrics) and Henry Mancini (music) in 1961, for whom it won that year's Academy Award for Best Original Song. It was originally sung in the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Audrey Hepburn, and has since been covered by many other artists. The song also won the 1962 Grammy Award for Record of the Year.

It became the theme song for Andy Williams, who first recorded it in 1961 and performed it at the Academy Awards ceremonies in 1962. Williams's version was disliked by Cadence Records president Archie Bleyer, who believed it had little or no appeal to teenagers. Andy Williams's version never charted, except as an LP track, which he recorded for Columbia in a hit album of 1962.

Williams said he never tired of singing "Moon River," whose melody he considered "beautiful" and whose lyrics he called "timeless."

My iPhone; My Best Friend

My constant companion, it goes with me everywhere. I have just never had a friend like this, a confidant so loyal, so dependable, so caring and close.

It will sit on my lap as we drive around town. Sometimes I will let it hang out the window so it can feel in the wind on its screen. It loves that. But I must be careful because like all iPhones, it's always looking out for other iPhones, beeping and chiming and just lighting up every time they meet.

I remember when I flew out to South Carolina, they made me put it in a container to go through the x-ray at airport security. I told it just to be still, close its eyes and don't let out a peep. It came through intact, joyful and oh, so happy to be back in my pocket.

I used to take it on dates and it always seemed to know just when to get me off the hook at awkward moments. Yes, there is an App for that. It loved the beach, taking so many photos and so excited by the sunsets, it was just drained by the time we got home.

In the morning, it always knows just when to wake me for work and if I have to be away from my computer, it always keeps the time for me, updates the markets, watches out for severe weather and get this, will turn itself into a flash light when the lights go out, or if I need to put a key into a lock in the dark.

In the quiet moments of the night, it will play my favorite love songs, or tune me into a radio broadcast from around the world, making sure I know all that there is to know so I can me ready for anything, anywhere. It will take me shopping, finding me the best deals and the newest gadgets to make my life easier. In the woods, it shows me true North, making sure I am never lost. It shows me the way to anywhere I want to go and even will let me watch my beloved Detroit Red Wings' games, even when its just sitting there on my lap while I drive.

No matter how much it is watching out for me, it always has time for a game, either with just the two of us or with virtually anyone else in the world. It's always there, always looking out for me, always putting me first.

Oh how I wish my parents could have met it. They would so happy, so proud that I had found such a wonderful partner for my life.

A