"This has got nothing to do with politics," David Allan, president and CEO of YM Biosciences Inc., likes to say about his firm's effort to win U.S. acceptance for a potential cancer blockbuster that originated in Cuba. "It's got everything to do with medicine, and getting a safe and benign drug to patients."

The trim-down tactics this spring by Poniard Pharmaceuticals Inc. to pump more thrust behind the Phase III SPEAR trial put most of the company's oomph behind its "pipeline-in-a-drug" candidate picoplatin, and easily could lead to an acquisition after data roll out by the end of this year.

Amgen Inc.'s rise in second-quarter earnings and the overseas deal with GlaxoSmithKline plc for denosumab sent the stock up last week, but left questions about the rest of 2009 as well as the bone-drug pipeline star, especially with regard to osteonecrosis of the jaw - a side effect that has also bedeviled (apparently to a lesser extent) competitor Zometa.