As earnings season winds down, Myriad Genetics (NASDAQ:MYGN) announced its fiscal year-end earnings yesterday.

Like fellow Rule Breakers picks PDL BioPharma (NASDAQ:PDLI) and Exelixis (NASDAQ:EXEL), Myriad finances its drug development with revenue unrelated to its pharmaceutical pipeline. Myriad makes money from its predictive-medicine genetic tests, which help doctors screen patients to determine their cancer risk. In the quarter, sales of the company's predictive-medicine products rose 47% year over year, bringing in $42 million.

Unfortunately, this healthy sales growth wasn't enough to stem the tide of red ink from other parts of the company; Myriad still lost nearly $8 million. But with more than $300 million of cash and investments following a $120 million equity offering in February, it's got plenty of cash to fund future drug development.

Speaking of its pipeline products, Myriad guided for its large phase 3 study of potential Alzheimer's treatment Flurizan to be completed in March of next year, with results expected before the middle of 2008. If the study succeeds, Myriad expects to submit a possible New Drug Application with the FDA in 2009.

Few if any drug developers can boast of a relationship with Oprah and Dr. Phil, but in the coming months, Myriad will. It plans to begin a direct-to-consumer advertising campaign for its breast and ovarian cancer predictive diagnostic tests during these shows' airtimes.

Myriad is an interesting drugmaker. Its predictive diagnostic tests occupy one of the hottest areas of medicine right now, Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) and other rivals also sell genetic tests, while firms such as Vanda Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VNDA) also extol diagnostic testing's ability to predict whether patients will respond to a given therapy. Now it's time for Myriad to leverage its thriving diagnostics business to help forthcoming new drugs succeed.

Myriad Genetics, PDL BioPharma, and Exelixis are active picks of our market-beating Rule Breakers newsletter. You can check out all our other recommendations, and get access to our message boards and exclusive content, with a 30-day free trial.

Fool contributor Brian Lawler does not own shares of any company mentioned in this article. The Fool has a disclosure policy.