Topic: How To Invest

Hi Pat: I enjoy reading your Q&A, and I am looking for your opinion on investing in this speculative stock: ProMetic Life Sciences. Look forward to your recommendations.

Article Excerpt

ProMetic Life Sciences, $0.36, symbol PLI on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 490.8 million; Market cap: $176.7 million; www.prometic.com), designs technology for removing pathogens from blood and extracting harmful proteins from plasma. The stock began moving up from just over $0.10 in October 2012, when China’s Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical took a 10% stake in the company. Shenzhen Hepalink also agreed to license ProMetic’s protein technology for a research and development project. That deal is worth $11 million and included an upfront fee of $2 million. The shares moved up again in January 2013, from around $0.30 to as high as $0.50 in February. The rise came after the company’s partner, Octapharma, confirmed that the FDA had approved Octaplas, a treatment for blood-clotting disorders, for the U.S. market. Octaplas, which includes ProMetric’s PrioClear product, has already treated more than two million patients outside the U.S. PrioClear removes prions from blood and reduces the risk of Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (or mad cow) disease being transmitted through…