One way to make $10 million in biotech

Earlier this month, Atossa Genetics’s stock price rose fivefold, and the company parlayed that into cash, banking $10 million through the exercise of some previously issued warrants. On the face of it, that sounds like standard operating procedure; small biotech companies almost always raise money on the back of good news.

But, as STAT’s Adam Feuerstein explains, the Atossa case is special. The news behind the share price surge was not a positive clinical trial or a lucrative licensing deal. It was a press release announcing that the company had provided its breast cancer drug to a sick patient under the FDA’s compassionate use program. It was the third such release Atossa has put out since February.

“Nothing says ‘credibility’ quite like raising money through the exploitation of really sick people,” Adam writes in his latest column taking stock of small-cap biotech companies.

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