Growth vs. Potential Growth

This is my first blog of the year 2008. I wish all of you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
Now to the actual blog…I read two articles in today’s Wall Street Journal.
One was how Amgen’s CEO raised the earnings expectations for Amgen and I quote directly from the article, ‘Amgen's best hope for recovering growth rests on denosumab, or D-mab, a new treatment for bones made brittle by osteoporosis and chemotherapy that Mr. Sharer has labeled a potential blockbuster.’

And the other article was on how Dr. Donahue while hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains almost a decade ago pontificated on why bears even after hibernating for up to six months do not suffer from osteoporosis and how that contrasts with humans, who even after a few weeks of inactivity suffer from softer bones. Aursos was founded in 2001 to research this phenomenon and to produce a commercial treatment for humans.

The link between the Amgen article and Dr. Donahue’s Bear Bones article is that one company is betting on a drug that slows the breakdown of bones vs. another one that was formed in 2001 to investigate how the parathyroid hormone in bears can be used to replicate the same bone growth in humans.

Is it an acquisition opportunity for Amgen or is Amgen’s potential blockbuster only that… a potential until the real one comes along? And, then how would investors respond to such a company?