Going Against the Migraine: The Rapid Rise of NuPathe

Serial entrepreneurs like Jane Hollingsworth are used to headaches. The NuPathe Pharmaceuticals co-founder and CEO has experienced many funding and oversight pains, building three pharmaceutical companies over her 25-year career. But one type of headache was more than an occupational hazard: migraines. Both Hollingsworth and her business partner, president Terri Sebree, are migraine sufferers. So when a brainstorming session with various pharmaceutical innovators and venture partners revealed the need for a more effective migraine treatment, the NuPathe team traded aspirin for lightbulbs, creating the Zelrix Migraine Patch.

Today, doctors prescribe triptans, a family of drugs introduced in the 1990s to act on the serotonin receptors in the brain, reducing blood vessel dilation that causes migraine pain. Triptan is typically taken orally at specific times of day--windows where the treatment is likely to be most effective. But, as many migraineurs experience extreme nausea or vomiting, taking a pill orally can seem uncomfortable or even unsafe. According to a 2008 National Headache Foundation survey, 48 percent of respondents who experienced nausea or vomiting with a migraine reported these symptoms as a moderate to major impact on when or how they took their medicine. NuPathe's Zelrix patch uses mild electronic pulses to administer triptans through the skin, reducing these fears and insuring patients get the most out of their medication.

It's a solution so simple, it has pharmaceutical professionals both locally and nationally wondering how no one has thought of it before. For Hollingsworth, the patch is indicative of a career spent following Occam's razor, one in which simple solutions to complex problems have become her calling card. After going public in August, NuPathe looks to bring Zelrix to the forefront by 2012 and stands poised to become the next big name in Greater Philadelphia's storied pharmaceutical industry.

"NuPathe didn't search for a new product to bring into the marketplace, they started with a blank sheet of paper," says Quaker BioVentures Managing Partner Rich Kollender, who sits on the board of NuPathe as one of its first investors. "They made a list of medical problems out there that they could try and solve for patients. They took one of the most popular treatments on the market, Sumatriptan, and made it better. They didn't try to fit a product into the marketplace and that, I think, is very different from how many companies do things."

Turns out that list is pretty lengthy. Currently, NuPathe is looking to tackle more serious neurological diseases, with an R&D pipeline examining ParkInson's, Schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. With drugs in the preclinical stage, and only 22 employees working out of one Conshohocken office, NuPathe hopes to hire sales, marketing and distribution staff once Zelrix is approved.

This logical approach comes not from the laboratory but from the boardroom. As a commercial litigator for Montgomery McCracken, Hollingsworth cut her teeth on big pharma merger contracts and copyright cases. The work piqued an interest that had been with her since childhood when her father, general counsel at Glaxo SmithKline, would bring his cases to the dinner table. When she left Montgomery McCracken, she sought to follow in her father's footsteps, seeking a job with IBAH Inc., a firm started by a fellow female entrepreneur Gerri Henwood out of her Bala Cynwyd home in 1986. By the time Hollingsworth got there in 1994, the company was a major player and would eventually expand to more than 1,000 employees and offices in 19 countries. Learning the industry from Henwood over the next four years would prove to be invaluable when IBAH was sold to Omnicare Inc in 1999. With her settlement earnings, Hollingsworth started Auxilium, her first foray into the pharmaceutical world. With no formal scientific training, Hollingsworth would attempt to play the game at a high level by, once again, taking a relatively simple approach to a complex industry.

"I like creating something out of nothing and I like solving problems and figuring things out," says Hollingsworth. "And that is a lot of what this industry is. If you are a good problem-solver, you can be pretty good at this."

With Auxilium, Hollingsworth targeted urology, a therapeutic area left alone by the larger shops, but with enough patients to be successful. With baby-boomers beginning to hit middle age, urological disorders were on the rise. Right around the time Auxilium opened its doors, another urology medication was hitting the market. Originally marketed for Pfizer as a treatment for high blood pressure, Sildenafil hit clinical trials and looked to be a failure. But by targeting the urology world, the medication became one of the most profitable products in pharmaceutical history. You know it as Viagra.

By following an unmet need in the medical industry and not the well-tread paths of big pharma, Hollingsworth and partner Sebree had an early inroad into a profitable niche market. By 2002, the young company had its first product--a topical testosterone supplement called Testim--through FDA approval. Hollingsworth and Sebree took Auxilium public in 2004 and sold the company shortly thereafter to form NuPathe.

"Our goal with Auxilium was to create a completely different therapeutic area around urology so that we could develop a core of products around that therapeutic area and make it work for our size company because we could build an infrastructure around it without competing against the big guns," says Hollingsworth.

Since starting NuPathe in 2005, Hollingsworth has assembled a management team responsible for more than 25 new drug applications and 11 products focused on innovating through underserved markets. And while her career pattern says it's about time for her to sell and move on to the next project, Hollingsworth and her team show no signs of slowing down. On the contrary, she has deeply involved in the biotech world, sitting on the boards of the University City Science Center and Pennsylvania Bio, working on projects building higher education programs and connecting Pennsylvania's bioscience leaders. And as she has done throughout her career, Hollingsworth continues to lead through an intuitive approach that has her reducing headaches for her customers and for some of Philadelphia's most dynamic pharmaceutical investors.

"Jane's diverse background and versatility allow her to look at industry issues from all perspectives," says Pennsylvania Bio president Chris Molineaux. "Through her various leadership roles, she has experienced it all and she brings those insights to our Board table."

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John Steele is a freelance writer, blogger and communication consultant in Philadelphia. Please send feedback here.

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Photos:

Jane Hollingsworth at NuPathe headquarters in Conshohocken

The Zelrix migrane patch

The push of a small button activates the patch

Hollingsworth

Zelrix patches are inspected before packaging

Zelrix packaging

All Photographs by Michael Persico