Not close to this translating into anything other than speculative "investing" in stocks, unless you're planning to retire in 30-40 years. Finding molecules that interfere with your favorite protein is the easy part. If someone told me they found a molecule that inhibits a given protein based on a folding model, I'd like them to show me the following:
1. This is a true effect (likely).
2. This effect occurs in human cells and doesn't result in immediate death. (Unlikely)
3. This translates to the desired effect in human cells. (Very unlikely)
4. This effect also occurs in animal cells. (Likely if above met)
5. This effect causes a desirable effect in the animal. (Unlikely, even if above met).
6. The drug isn't toxic to humans (unlikely).
7. The drug has the desired effect (very unlikely).
8. It is also profitable to make and market. (Unlikely)
9. It does something that the generic drugs don't do. (Unlikely)
Only about 1 in 10,000 drugs that get through step 2 get through the remaining steps. That's where the true cost comes in.
Crispr-cas9 use is also the easy part (see above, but replace drug with modified transcript). My mentor's lab demonstrated that finding in the above press release in animal models (for colorectal cancer & melanoma) about 4 years ago now. That, again, is the "easy" part. Also, I wouldn't trust anyone who says their technique has "no side effects". That may be true in the short time-span they observe the mice (and as far as we understand mice physiology), but again there are so many things that seem to be well tolerated (transiently) in mice and are not in humans. I don't know who runs the PR department for some of the research institutes in Israel, but they're routinely putting out this nonsense and it is frankly embarrassing. The people who are making major contributions in biotech from Israel and elsewhere are publishing papers and keeping very circumspect about what promises are made.
That being said, investing in a whole-market ETF seems wise. Weighing it tech-heavy is probably not, for unrelated reasons related to volatility tolerance and sector risk.
Illumina has been around for 10 years at least, and their sequencers are decent. (Definitely makes my research a lot easier). Again, sequencing is now the easy part, trying to find a use for that information is harder even with very complex analytic analyses.
I am barred from directly investing in drug companies due to conflicts of interest with my position, but if I could the only ones that would be worth investing in are the large pharma and hospital supply companies. The others are highly volatile, mostly because people lose sight of the fact that healthcare isn't the same as software development or engineering.
