In the late 90s, a young colleague of mine got a hot stock tip on two biotech companies from his uncle, a doctor. Tech stock insanity hit both me and my mother. Without research or due diligence, I bought one and she bought the other. According to The Wall Street Journal, 12/06/07, "As measured by the Dow Jones technology index, tech stocks topped out in late March 2000. Then they began a long slide that lasted until October 2002 and left them 84% below their peak."
My stock slid into death. My mother's slid but lived. She held on to it.
At the 12/06/07 NewVa Corridor Technology Council (NCTC) Biotech After Hours hosted by the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Wendy Penry and Marge Musumeci, representatives from Human Genome Sciences, Inc., spoke about their company's evolution from research, to development, to commercialization.
The drug Human Genome Sciences hopes to market first addresses Hepatitis C. The second addresses lupus.
After their talk, I asked Ms. Penry, Virginia Tech Class of '91, if the company's stock symbol was HGSI. She said yes.
The name of the stock my mother bought? Human Genome Sciences, symbol HGSI. She has been diagnosed with lupus.
Hold on, mother.
