Nanotechnology stocks continued their strong run in the spring, with the Lux Research index rising about twice as fast as wider measures of the technology market over the past two months.

Credit: SOURCE: LUX RESEARCH

Strong performers during this period included Immunicon, a Pennsylvania-based company that develops magnetic particles for use in cancer diagnostics, whose shares soared from just over $3 to touch $5 last month after it announced the extension of a collaborative research agreement with Pfizer at the end of March.

Another stock that powered ahead since March was Arrowhead Research, a diversified Californian nanotechnology group. According to Peter Hebert, president of Lux Research, the New York consultancy that compiles the Lux index, Arrowhead owns several small companies that may soon be ready to make initial public stock offerings.

There have been no such offerings so far this year in the United States, but Cap-XX, an Australian company that makes supercapacitors, launched successfully on London's AIM on 27 April, raising about £17 million (US$31 million) from investors.

Hebert says that adverse reports about the safety of nanotech — notably those that followed the withdrawal of a bathroom cleaner called Magic Nano in Germany on 30 March — have had little effect on overall market sentiment. “It's a significant issue,” he says, “and it's important that research is done into health and safety. But large companies are not shifting away from nanotechnology and neither are national governments.”