You may have heard that this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Jeffery Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael Young for their work in unraveling the workings of our body’s daily clock – the circadian rhythm. You may not think too much about partying all night or getting up at 2 am for work, but your body thinks about it plenty. We know that the 24 hour light/dark cycle effects our chemistry and health, but they have found that plant leaves, for example, can open up and close even when put in complete dark – controlled not by light, but by genes.

As explained in the Biotechin.Asia report on the Nobel Prize, it’s the genes that the prize winners solved to advance our understanding of the clock. This year’s Nobel Prize reflects the genetic revolution I wrote an article about. I called it “Insider Wisdom And The New Medicine”. There is a revolution going on in medicine and it could usher in a whole new array of effective, more palatable therapy. But how do you invest safely in something this new? The genetic developers are typically tiny upstart companies going into a sea of red to put drugs through clinical trials for FDA approval. But only about one of 10 ever gets approved and the casualty rate of these stocks is high. You can own stock in the large biopharmas that are now more than ever tending to collaborate with the more promising candidates of the small caps, and often buy them out. This is lower risk, but you would likely be better off with a biotech ETF.

If you want to venture into the topsy turvy arena of the genetic revolution with the smaller companies, there is another choice now developing that offers much higher return. The Ligand “model” is what it’s often called and Ligand Pharmaceuticals is the first to decisively go down this road. A Forbes 2015 article details this nicely. Up until 2008, Ligand had been swinging the trials bat with no earnings home runs to show for it. As the Forbes piece relates: