Subject: MicroGeneSys Sets Offering, Bucking Investment Trend 
Date: Published: 11/16/88 55 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Enterprise:  
    MicroGeneSys Sets
    Offering, Bucking
    Investment Trend
    ----  
    By James P. Miller
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    MicroGeneSys Inc., the tiny biotechnology concern that was
 first to begin U. S. human trials of a potential vaccine
 against AIDS, will ask investors to back a long shot in its
 planned initial offering totaling as much as $31.3 million.
    If it goes ahead with the offering by year end, as
 planned, the company will be plunging into a soft overall
 equities market that has particularly lost its taste for
 speculative biotech stocks.  Since last year's market crash,
 few such companies have considered going to public markets
 for more funding, and many biotech concerns have seen their
 share prices shrivel to a fraction of their pre-crash value.
    The company's lead research product is its experimental
 vaccine for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.  MicroGeneSys
 began its pioneering domestic human testing on the vaccine in
 1987, and the trials currently include about 100 subjects.  To
 date, the experimental vaccine has been successful in
 producing antibodies to the AIDS virus, but such an immune
 reaction doesn't at all guarantee protection against AIDS
 infection.  It also is at work on nine other potential
 vaccines, for such things as tropical diseases and
 respiratory illness.
    Creating an anti-AIDS vaccine is considered one of the
 most technically difficult challenges in modern infectious
 disease history.  And MicroGeneSys, in its preliminary
 prospectus, warned "there can be no assurance" its research
 will succeed.  It also pointed out that it will be "at least
 several years" before it gets regulatory approval for
 commercial sales of any of its products, assuming they do
 prove successful.
    Investors used to skim past such warnings in their rush to
 get on the biotech bandwagon.  But they have grown wary, after
 witnessing the industry grow thick with competitors, some of
 whom have found the task of translating their bright ideas
 into commercial products more difficult than they had
 anticipated.

[22 lines irrelevant to AIDS have been removed. -- sysop]


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