Biotech has been misunderstood as inherently risky for years. But that is no longer the case, says Ailsa Craig, fund manager of Schroders’ International Biotechnology Trust.

Where to find healthy profits in biotech

MoneyWeek Talks

Is there sort of pendulum swing in the way regulators look at pills? Are they perhaps a bit more inclined to, you know, just grab something without necessarily making companies jump through all sorts of hoops? It's highly, highly regulated and very difficult to get a drug through clinical trials and approved on the market. The failure rate is very high from drug discovery to approval. It's a 90% failure rate.

Hello, I'm Andrew Van Sickle, Editor-in-Chief of MoneyWeek Magazine. Welcome to another episode of MoneyWeek Talks. MoneyWeek's motto is make it, keep it, spend it. In each episode, we help you do just that with guests whose insight and perspectives you can profit from. Today, the topic is the cutting edge of healthcare. We're looking at biotechnology, one of the most innovative and fast-changing sectors of the stock market. Here to discuss it with me is Elsa Craig, Lead Portfolio Manager of the International Biotechnology Trust.

Welcome, Elsa. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me, Andrew. Shall we just start at the beginning? What exactly is meant by biotechnology? Is it just a whizzy pharma? That's the impression most people have, I think. Sure. So there are two definitions which kind of simplifies the answer to that question. Initially, it was about using biology and what we understood by biology, so cells and proteins, etc., to treat diseases.

I mean, this industry started 30 odd years ago, and that's how the emerging companies portrayed themselves. And then it's morphed into more of a capital markets definition, whereby early emerging companies are being lumped together as biotech. And the converse of that is little white tablets. So traditionally, medicines for diseases were exactly that. And then biotech emerged using proteins like I described.

Where to find healthy profits in biotech

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Where to find healthy profits in biotech

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.