Skip to content

Posts by: Ray Blanco

Author Image for Ray Blanco

Ray Blanco

While other eighth graders were out playing soccer, Ray Blanco was in his basement learning how to build what’s called a “Wilson Cloud Chamber” – a supercooled device for detecting particles of ionizing radiation. Now, he is an expert in advanced robotics, avionics, genomics, and biotechnology. Blanco was raised in Miami, FL, after his family fled Cuba in the 1960s. He is co-editor of Technology Profits Confidential and contributes to Breakthrough Technology Alert and Penny Sleuth.

  1. Technology Profits Confidential

    Advanced Cancer Genomics Doubles Its Potential Customer Base • May 10, 2013

    As you know, Genomic Health has been leading the way in cancer diagnostics. These tests are revolutionizing cancer therapy by allowing for increased treatment personalization. Genomic Health’s diagnostics read genomic data contained in a patient’s cancer cells, which allows physicians to custom tailor therapy to their patients’ needs.…Read more…

  2. Technology Profits Confidential

    Biotech Updates: Endocyte and Aveo Pharmaceuticals • May 3, 2013

    Endocyte is best known for its lead development program using SMDC (small-molecule drug conjugate) technology against cancer. As the name implies, Endocyte’s unique and differentiated SMDC platform links a targeting molecule with a therapeutic or diagnostic one as part of a single package.…Read more…

  3. Technology Profits Confidential

    Targeted Immunotherapies Poised to Break Through • April 30, 2013

    Increasingly, the great new medical technologies aren’t coming from the pharmaceu­tical behemoths, but from scrappy little biotech upstarts. In few instances is this truer than in the field of cancer immunotherapy.
    Immunotherapy is defined as a “treatment designed to produce immunity to disease or enhance the resistance of the immune system to an active disease process, as cancer.” Simply put, cancer immunotherapy activates the body’s powerful and complex immune system so that it can do its job better.…Read more…

  4. Technology Profits Confidential

    Flash Sell: Book 100% Gain on This Biotechnology Company • April 19, 2013

    To borrow a line from a classic Steve Miller rock hit, it’s time to “take the money and run.” Last night, my feed lit up with news about one company that reported great Phase 2 data for its follow-on cystic fibrosis drug VX-661. After-hours, the shares shot up by over 50%. We originally recommended selling half the company’s shares in June 2011 for a 60% gain, after which it dropped to under $30 in November of that year. Share prices recovered in 2012 and have been trading between $40-60 since. Last night’s news pushed its share price to over $80. This puts us at an over 100% gain — good news in this dropping market.…Read more…

  5. Technology Profits Confidential

    Ariad Presents New Data and ISIS Teams Up with Roche • April 12, 2013

    Ariad Pharmaceuticals has presented some very interesting new data at this year’s meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). As it turns out, recently approved leukemia drug ponatinib may eventually see use in other cancer types.

    According to Ariad, ponatinib is a potent inhibitor of “key activating and drug-resistant KIT mutants in GIST.” KIT is a gene that codes for a cellular signaling receptor often found in mutated form in cancer cells, including gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). Current therapies use existing inhibitory drugs.…Read more…

  6. Technology Profits Confidential

    Biotech Progress Reports From NewLink Genetics and Isis Pharmaceuticals • April 5, 2013

    I hope you’ve enjoyed the holiday. Coming back to nonholiday reality, the “consensus” is that things are going poorly in the world, indeed. Internationally, North Korea is throwing one of its periodic temper tantrums and issuing its usual threats, heightening tensions in an economically and politically important part of the world. Domestically, things aren’t sounding …Read more…

  7. Daily Reckoning

    10-fold Gains from the Birth of Additive Manufacturing, Part I • April 3, 2013

    A massive manufacturing technology convergence is in its early stages at this very moment. Exponentially expanding computing power, artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced sensing technology will change the way we make everything. Since prehistory, we’ve been working at finding new ways to make things. We started out, over a million years ago, chipping away at …Read more…