When in doubt, pivot to marijuana

“Intrexon Announces Advances in Production of Medical Cannabis,” reads the press release that sent a biotech company’s stock price up 35 percent yesterday.

The company, which has to date focused on engineering mosquitoes and fish, has come up with a process to manufacture medicinal cannabinoids, according to the release, which provided little in the way of detail and nothing resembling a timeline. That process has “potential to provide greater supply-chain security,” it goes on, and “avoids the resource-intensive isolation that often leads to quality and quantity variability in end products,” which is sure to please fans of supply-chain security and critics of resource-intensive isolation alike.

The stock move, Intrexon’s biggest single-day jump in more than three years, comes amid hyperbolic Wall Street interest in anything even arguably related to marijuana. Tilray, a Canadian producer of medicinal marijuana products, has largely returned to earth after watching its stock price double in a matter of days, but the fervor hasn’t subsided in biotech. Last week, Corbus Pharmaceuticals gained more than $100 million in market value after paying $250,000 for the rights to some endocannabinoid-related drugs that are years away from becoming actual products.