Reborn: Opportunity Abounds in Biosciences

Recro Pharma, based in an office park in the Philadelphia suburb of Malvern, is one of many life sciences startups that illustrate the changing face of the industry.

The biopharmaceutical firm isn’t a household name like Pfizer or Siemens, with which it shares real estate. But Recro is no less ambitious, focusing its research on one of the most debilitating conditions a person can experience: pain, more specifically intractable pain that comes after an operation or results from debilitating diseases like cancer.

"There's probably nothing worse for someone to have and not be able to get relief from," says Recro's CEO, serial entrepreneur Gerri Henwood.

Recro is in the midst of trials on a type of pain medication that, for now, is only available at hospitals and has to be injected. But the company is working on a variety of these drugs--known to those in the field as alpha-2 antagonists--that can be available on an outpatient basis as well. Patients could get their pain medication in the form of a nasal spray, droplets that go in the mouth or a skin application that Henwood describes as somewhere between a patch and a lotion. This type of medicine has distinct benefits over pain medications often dispensed now, she says: It can make people feel better without rendering them unable to interact with their families, and alpha-2 antagonists aren't addictive.

And this is from a company with just five full-time employees and 11 part-time workers. Indeed, Recro's website declares two advantages of running a smaller business: flexibility and fast decision-making.

There's no denying that the down economy has been rough for the  life sciences sector. When industry news website FiercePharma listed the 10 companies that laid off the most workers in 2009, seven firms on the list had a presence in the Keystone State. But Chris Molineaux, president of the statewide advocacy group Pennsylvania Bio that is hosting its annual Biotech 2010 event next week, says the upheaval of Big Pharma represents a new model for the industry.

No longer will huge companies try to do every task under one corporate banner, Molineaux says. Already, it's increasingly common to outsource tasks like information technology, financing and the administrative aspects of clinical drug trials. Researchers remain in-house or come to a company through an acquisition.

"It's going to be more of a patchwork. We're not going to have 15 large pharmaceutical companies," Molineaux says. "We'll probably have 50 medium-sized pharmaceutical companies and dozens of these smaller contractors."

But the new model creates plenty of opportunity for startups and young companies. The downturn has been rough but also leads to rebirth.

"We're the discovery engines," says James Thacker, president and chief science officer at TherimuneX Pharmaceuticals, a Doylestown drug discovery and development company with three full-time employees. "To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it's the best of times, it's the worst of times."

One of the goals for Biotech 2010, a symposium set for Oct. 27-28 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, is to show the opportunities created by this industry reinvention. The event is expected to draw about 900 people to meet potential business partners and learn from others' experiences. Biotech 2010's two keynote speakers are Tommy Thompson, who was Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush, and Alex Gorsky, Johnson & Johnson's worldwide chairman of medical devices and diagnostics.

Recro Pharma and about 40 other companies will present their work before an audience of investors, life sciences executives and others in the field. TherimuneX, another of the presenters, will discuss new treatments it has developed to boost patients' immunity, thereby preventing hospital-acquired infections such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which is better known as MRSA and affects many thousands each year. TherimuneX is also developing drugs to treat hepatitis B, Alzheimer's disease and scleroderma, which leads to tighter, thicker skin, thickened blood vessels and damaged internal organs.

And West Chester-based Molecular Targeting Technologies Inc. will present its work with a molecule that can target Alzheimer's as well as certain types of cancer. The molecule is intended as a way to diagnose these conditions, but can also be used to take medicines to the most effective site for treatment, says company co-founder Chris Pak. Right now, Pak says his firm is seeking partners to work on this research and for funding to keep it going.

And one of the main goals of Biotech 2010 is to create chances for these partnerships to form, Molineaux says. Symposium organizers are taking advantage of biopartnering.com, which facilitates these connections in cyberspace and in real life. Another avenue for collaboration is the event's Innovation Corridor, where academic and industry researchers can make contacts and show potential investors what they're working on.

"This could present opportunities for a licensing deal or an acquisition or some kind of partnership," Molineaux says.

Collaborations with investors are especially important given the high cost and extensive timeline involved in developing a new medicine. Often-cited figures from Tufts University's Center for the Study of Drug Development say that new medications cost an average of $802 million and take at least 10 years to bring to the marketplace. And venture capital to biotech companies has slowed down thanks to the poor economy and uncertainty about the effects of the health care reform law President Obama signed earlier this year. Specifically, Molineaux says, it's not clear how much companies will be reimbursed for their medicines.

Despite all this uncertainty in the field, however, Henwood sees a silver lining for life sciences in the state. Herself a veteran of Smith Kline & French, she remembers the legions of refugees from Big Pharma in the 1980s who went on to start their own companies or take on leadership positions in other firms. The field is seeing a similar wave today, she says, and there are even more opportunities now as there were then.

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Rebecca VanderMeulen is a freelance journalist who lives near Downingtown. She worked at her college chemistry department and once proctored an organic chemistry exam because no one else was around to do it.  Send feedback here.

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Photos:

Recro Pharma CEO Gerri Henwood CEO

Product is weighed for accuracy at the lab

Recro's VP of Development Randall J. Mack

Scintillation vials containing formulation

All Photographs by Jeff Fusco