By Chris Coyle
June 03, 2000

Just as advertised, we now have the second part of the Human Genome Sciences (NASDAQ: HGSI) segment broadcasted last weekend on CNBC's Market Week with Maria Bartiromo. In this interview, Maria interviewed Faraz Naqvi, portfolio manager of the Dresdner RCM Biotech Fund, about Human Genome.

If you have not read the interview with HGSI CEO Willaim Haseltine yet, I recommend that you take a look at that article and then come back here.

Without further ado, here is the interview.

Bartiromo: Your thoughts on Human Genome stock right now.

Naqvi: We actually think...we own Human Genome stock right now. It's actually a core part of our portfolio. We sort of divided the thesis on this stock into two different phases: one is the near-term phase, and obviously the drugs that you heard Bill talking about, and of course, the long-term prospects of the drug development scenario that Human Genome has. In terms of the near-term drugs, we actually are very favorable on a couple of the compounds, have some concerns about some of the other compounds in development, but as for the long-term prospects, very positive.

Bartiromo: Tell me about BLyS. This is the product that I just mentioned. It's expected to go into Clinical I Phase testing over the next couple of weeks. How soon do you expect that and would you think this will actually impact the stock price and progress of the near-term?

Naqvi: Absolutely. It's going to impact the stock price, especially now that we have had some pull back and some more reasonable valuations in Human Genome. We actually think that BLyS is one of the more exciting drugs in Human Genome's pipeline, especally the earlier stage...ah...establishing the earlier stage pipeline for HGS. As far as BLyS goes, we've actually done a tremendous amount of work and we think that clinical prospects of the drug are enormous, if in fact, its gets over some of the toxicology stages that we anticipate will happen in Phase I with the drug.

That ends the interview.

Although this interview is considerably shorter than the one with Mr. Haseltine, I felt compelled to share it with you.

In other news, make sure to come back to the web site soon. Within a week, I will have the StockChamp portfolio tracker on the site for everyone to see how my portfolio is doing (It isn't doing well right now, but gained some serious ground this week).

In case you're wondering how the StockChamp stock selection criteria is coming, I'm still working on it. I think it might be ready by the end of the month. Then, we can use it to see how well our stocks fit into the portfolio.

Make sure to have a great rest of weekend! And remember, invest like a champ!

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