This Biotech Billionaire Says He Fights Zika Better Than the UN
- Randal Kirk's Intrexon makes genetically modified mosquitoes
- Intrexon soars 73% since Jan. 13 as Brazil outbreak widens
Aedes aegypti mosquitos are seen in a lab at the Fiocruz institute on January 26, 2016 in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty ImagesBillionaire Randal Kirk says his genetically modified mosquitoes can fight the Zika virus better than the United Nations. Investors seem to think he’s right.
Shares of his biotech company Intrexon Corp. surged 73 percent since Jan. 13, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested a possible link between the mosquito-borne Zika virus and birth defects known as microcephaly in Brazil, the host of this year’s Olympic Games. Two days later, the CDC issued a travel alert for pregnant women traveling to Brazil. Analysts from Wunderlich to Stifel Nicolaus & Co. tied Intrexon’s rise to possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in additional annual sales of its mosquitoes in more than two dozen countries with significant Zika outbreaks.