Speculative Pick of the Week: Alexza Pharmaceuticals (ALXA)

Let’s say you suffer from debilitating migraine headaches, and you actually have a medicine that works, but it takes 15-20 minutes to take effect. Fifteen to 20 minutes of crippling pain.
What if someone offered you a drug that would stop your migraine within seconds?

And now imagine someone who suffers from panic attacks. When the panic attacks happen, they honestly believe they’re going to die. Every second is stretched out in their head. Imagine a drug that could ease that persons anxiety the moment they take it.

Or a cancer patient, a person who experiences ‘breakthrough pain‘ so intense and sudden that it overpowers any of the painkillers that the patient’s already on. What if that person could eliminate that pain instantly.

That kind of instant relief is possible with an inhalable drug delivery system. When you inhale a drug, the chemicals get into your bloodstream and get to your brain even faster than if you had injected it. And a relatively new pharmaceutical company has developed a drug delivery system based on that fact.

Alexza Pharmaceuticals has developed a what they call the Staccato system, which is a proprietary system that vaporizes various drugs to form an aerosol that delivers the pure drug to deep lung tissues through one simple breath. The company currently has six products in development targeting five central nervous system or psychiatry indications: acute agitation, panic attacks, migraine headaches, breakthrough pain, and insomnia.

I’m sold. They are a development stage pharma company, but the technology looks solid and it works. I think these guys are going to partner up (or get bought out entirely) by a much larger pharmaceutical and the stock will go through the roof.

Check out the Staccato system device: