meg tirrell takes a look. >> reporter: biotech has been on an incredible run and the question everyone keeps asking is when does it end? the nasdaq biotech index has returned more than triple the s&p 500 in the last three years. 2014 set a record for initial public offerings. blowing out even the big bubble year of 2000 and this year so far, the momentum continues. this week ten health care companies plan to go public on the nasdaq. greece starts trading today and last week biotech companies raised $2.6 billion in secondary offerings, according to rbc capital markets. analysts and investors say at some point, the market won't be able to absorb more deals. >> we've seen a plethora of deals over the last few weeks, the first couple weeks of january and it's sort of been a mixed bag. some of the offerings successful and some haven't. that suggests that maybe either a waning appetite or just a limit to the capacity of biotech analysts to research companies quickly enough to make investment decisions. >> reporter: but we might not be at the end just yet. biotech bulls point to a couple of t

meg tirrell has more from the white house. >> reporter: invitations were mysterious. the policies would like to invite you to the white house. the drug makers including regenerators and merck and ai lum nah. announced the $200 million investment in precision medicine medicine. treatments for diseases created right here in the united states. >> because we shouldn't just celebrate innovation. we have to invest in innovation. >> reporter: so what is precision medicine? it's described as the right treatment for the right patient at the right time. therapy is more tailored to the underlying drivers of disease. the government will start with initiative on cancer driving understanding of its root causes to spur drug development. it will also build a national database of health information on at least a million volunteers. with everything from genetic data to health records to lifestyle habits. jor gee leads at regeneron. using research to drive drug development, a method that led to pcsk 9 inhibitors aimed at lowering cholesterol. >> if we define what makes us more susceptib

meg tirrell has our story tonight. >> reporter: for the biggest health care company, the fourth quarter was just okay. growth continued in johnson&johnson's farm constitute pharma business. it was j&j's forecast for 2015 that caused the stock to plunge today. primarily due to a stronger u.s. dollar. >> the dollar kept stronger versus these overseas currencies meaning the profits that multinational companies are generating outside of the u.s. are being brought back at basically lower rates, whether it's the euro the yen or some of the emerging market currencies like russia it's been a meaningful change in rates over the last six months. so if you're a u.s. company selling products outside the u.s. you're going to get hit when that happens. >> reporter: j.p. morgan analyst mark wienstein said we're likely to see from other companies. and j&j, tough 2015 comes from key competition including hepatitis c medicine olicio. looking for the consumer products businesses to offset slowdowns in growth. coming back from a series of recalls that took popular over the counter medicine like tylenol and

let's head over to the jpmorgan health care conference where meg tirrell is joined by ceo hans bishop in a first on cnbc interview. >> meg? >> mr. bush, thank you for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> there is so much excitement around the immunotherapy you guys are doing known as car-t. can you explain the potential? >> we hope it can revolutionize the way we treat cancer and other diseases. the technology has shown we have solved a little bit of the puzzle about how he reengineer a patient's immune system to fight cancer. the promise ultimately is not just better outcomes, but maybe avoiding some of the long-term toxicities of current treatments. >> novartis, you guys, how do you differentiate and when? >> first of all, i think it's a good thing. it's a good thing for patients. it's going to keep everyone on their toes. our belief is competitive advantage comes from speed of insights, particularly into how you make these technologies work in solid tumors. this technology, whilst incredibly promising, the data in leukemia really, really very significant, all that said, it's very early.

meg tirrell, i'm going to put you on the spot. your initial response on j & j?with them recently is their pharma business is showing a boost from previous years. it's been driving a lot of the strongest growth. they've been having a lot of trouble with fx. that's another thing we're worried about. that'll be interesting to look at. >> forecast right here guys. i'll give you a number without context. they see the full year adjusted eps 46.12 to 6.27. >> that's a little lower. >> that's why we have you here, meg. you bring brains to the operation. >> from what i was looking at from jpmorgan they were saying 6.25 to 6.35. >> on the back of morgan stanley's numbers, we saw futures firming up a little bit. but this no doubt would be a boost to the market if the shares could hold into the green when we're looking at the open. >> i want to just -- peter just -- our earnings specialist. >> they don't know the voices in our head. don't reveal our secrets. pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. >> peter just told me and peter is the man with the word. he said the

meg tirrell tells us why. >> good morning.ta coming out from biogen making its shares move. what it aims to do is repair the nerve scarring that you see in diseases like multiple sclerosis. these data did show evidence of biological repair of the system. the study shows improvement in the primary end point. but some mixed results didn't show improvement on the secondary goals in the study. earlier we had seen shares up 7%. now up only as much as 2% premarket as people are digesting these data. but really this is an important program. because this idea of remile nation, that's repairing the scars from the nerves. this could be the first program to actually reverse some of that disease you see. some of that progression you see in m.s. so we should see more data throughout the year and next year. but some really watched data coming out from biogen. back to you guys. >> all right, meg. thank you. what a stock. >>> coming up our big lineup continues at the top of the hour. barry sternlicht is here. then at 8:30 former sirius xm ceo

our meg tirrell joins us and she has a very special guest this morning. meg?ht. we're joined bright and early in san francisco by dr. sam waksal. the chairman and founder of kadmon. thank you for joining us. >> it's my pleasure. thank you. >> tell us about your new company. in some ways people might think of it as emclon 2.0. >> well 1.0 became an important part of eli lilly's pipeline. which i think is going to get on the market soon. becomes an important part of lilly. kadmon is a bit of a different company. at imclone, we worked on what are important now. kadm o rks n's working on both antibodies and small molecules. and we have expanded from the cancer area into very novel areas. we're in oncology. i know that area very well. harlan and i know that area very well. but we are now in autoimmune diseases. i think we've got one of the most novel targets in the immunology field. no one else has developed a selective inhibiter. it is a rocking target. it has really allowed us to look at the immune system a different way for autoimmune disease, fibrosis, a number

let's get to meg tirrell who is at the jpmorgan conference and is joining us with a special guest. hey, joe. we're going to bring in the ceo of foundation medicine. thank you for joining us. >> thanks for having me. i think it's a great day for foundation medicine and roche and an important day for patients that are battling cancer. >> we wish you were with us in san francisco but we know you're with your employees today. tell us about the billion-dollar deal roche is doing. you guys paying more than double your valuation on friday. what is roche getting with foundation medicine that would inspire it to pay more than double your price. >> what we're really focused on is really the transformational nature. it is a molecular information company here. and what we do is work with onkolgss around the state and also those who practice in the communities around the united states to help them understand each patient's cancer at the level of its blueprint. roche is clearly a leader on technology. they understand the therapeutic side as well as diagnostic. that way we can accelerate that mov

meg tirrell joins us from washington with more. thing he said in the state of the union address which now's the time i think everybody would agree with that. because we're almost ready. we're right on the cusp i think. >> absolutely. that's what a lot of people think. we reported earlier this week that several drug makers had received invitations to the white house today. it is that precision medicine initiative that president obama mentioned in the state of the union address. we now have some details. he'll allocating $215 million in his budget proposal on monday to this project. the funding is going to go to nih, the national cancer institute, fda, and other places. there will be a focus on cancer. and also a push to compile a national data base of more than a million americans and all of their health information. and that will of course include genomic sequencing. but also include things like lifestyle, things from their medical records, use of personal health devices and all sorts of things. it's a comprehensive project but sta

tdd# 1-800-345-2550 ♪ ♪ >>> let's get back to cnbc headquarters where meg tirrell joins us with a special >> thanks so much. clinical trials of two experimental vaccines for ebola will be tested in the next couple weeks. joining me now, ceo of gsk. mr. witty, thanks for joining us. >> thanks, meg. >> the ebola vaccine, you're starting phase three trials. tell me how you were able to speed this up so quickly. >> really two or three things. first of all, some terrific coordination between the companies rb regulators and cdc, and world health organization. we took a lot of the space out of the decision making process firstly. secondly we made some very early to parallel process. we just completed four parallel phase one trials. that really expedited the speed at which we could build some knowledge. and then we made some risk decisions way back in august to start to expand our manufacturing capacity so we could move from lap scale to a much expanded capacity much more quickly. which means we're now in a position where we can start to deliver potentially tens of thousands of doses into these t