Sangamo Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGMO)

I'm taking another shot at Sangamo, one of the companies I've has the least success with. I've changed my hands off approach not so much because of anything that has happened at Sangamo, but because of what happened at Sarepta in July of this year. At that time, Sarepta was a small biopharma tackling a major disease and had released some encouraging findings that weren't enough to change the market's perception of them as a permanent disappointer. Of course, we know now that Sarepta was about to drop the biggest shocker of 2012.

Sangamo has also had a very spotty history with their zinc finger technology, spending years and countless tens of millions of dollars on a dead end drug for diabetic neuropathy. More recently, they excited the street with the development of a zinc finger CCR5 blocker for HIV. A year ago, the company released mixed results from an early trial showing that only one of six patients was able to reach an undetectable viral load after cessation of anti-retroviral therapy. The company is now conducting phase II trials of the zinc finger CCR5 blocker SB-728 in CCR5 heterozygotes and HIV wild types with lymphopenic preconditioning.

The situation reminds me strongly of Sarepta - possible proof of concept data without dramatic clinical results - yet. In retrospect, the street underestimated the importance of dystrophin expression in the trial and focused on the lack of clinical effect. Of course, it turned out that it was simply too early to see the clinical effect. Similarly, there's a good chance that the upcoming phase II data will prove to be much more impressive from a clinical perspective than the previous trial, which could cause Sangamo stock to jump by a factor of 10 the way Sarepta's did beginning in July.

I wouldn't put real money into Sangamo here until there's some encouraging preliminary data from the phase II trials and the stock has been partially derisked. I told someone on Twitter that I try to minimize gambling on biopharma results. But there's no reason to be so conservative in CAPS, where the worst thing I can lose is points. When it comes to Sangamo, I've already been there more than once.