Just having received great news about their products, these three companies are gearing up and in six months’ time, everyone is going to be talking about them. Luckily, you have the chance to invest in these companies before everyone else starts rushing in.

It is good to be back in Miami after spending a week out in Las Vegas for the MoneyShow where I was giving several presentations on how to properly optimize and manage a biotech portfolio. Some of the tenets of this strategy were posted last week right here on Investors Alley.

An investor can gain exposure to this highly volatile space that has outperformed the overall market significantly over the past five years in myriad ways. The easiest is just to buy a mutual fund focusing on this sector or an ETF like iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (NASDAQ: IBB) that focuses exclusively on the biotech sector.

One could also just concentrate on profitable large cap growth plays within this arena that are sporting attractive valuations like Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD). I have found though over two decades of investing in this area that in order to maximize your long term returns you must add some promising but speculative small cap biotech concerns to the mix. Besides diversifying extensively within this sub-sector of the biotech area with small stakes in numerous companies with potentially huge upside if things fall into place one must actively be aware of what catalysts are occurring in the stocks they hold or are thinking about purchasing.

This requires more active management than most investors want to devote to running a portfolio, but that devotion can lead to higher returns for those that are willing to dedicate the time. Here are a couple of promising small cap biotechs I currently hold that have had some fortunate news come their way over the last week or so which could be positive catalysts to stock price appreciation over the near and medium term.

First up is Fibrocell Science (NASDAQ: FCSC), which is up some 15% since the last time I covered it in late January. Fibrocell extracts cells from the skin to create localized therapies that are compatible with the unique biology of each and every patient. The company uses this method to develop therapies to treat rare and serious skin and connective tissue disease. Fibrocell has one approved product on the market to treat “smile” lines but has several other trials progressing.