Billionaire Cliff Asness’ Top 10 Healthcare Stock Picks

7. Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX)

AQR Capital Management’s Stake Value: $650,659,396

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 53

Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX) is one of billionaire Cliff Asness’ top 10 healthcare stock picks. On June 8, Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX) presented new data at the Psych Congress Elevate conference in Las Vegas showing that valbenazine delivered clinically meaningful benefits to 94% of patients over 48 weeks of treatment. Valbenazine, which the company sells as INGREZZA, is a once-daily drug for tardive dyskinesia (TD), a neurological movement disorder that causes repetitive, uncontrolled movements of the face, tongue, limbs, or torso, and is estimated to affect at least 800,000 adults in the US.

The company said the findings come from a new post-hoc analysis of the Phase 3 KINECT-4 trial. In earlier KINECT-4 results, 59% of patients reached the strictest definition of remission, which means absent or minimal involuntary movements across all seven body regions measured by the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS). The new analysis looked specifically at patients who did not cross that threshold and found that 86% of them still achieved at least a 30% reduction in AIMS score, and 67% achieved at least a 50% reduction. This is what brings the combined meaningful-benefit figure to 94%.

Alongside the trial data, Neurocrine also presented findings from a separate retrospective analysis of more than 176,000 Medicare patients newly diagnosed with TD. That analysis found that 90% of those patients had at least one liver-related risk factor. It also found that 44% had three or more, including conditions like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and hyperlipidemia, all of which can quietly compromise liver function over time.

Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX) is a biopharmaceutical company. It discovers, develops, and commercializes treatments for neurological and endocrine-related diseases and disorders.