Events | Past | May 27, 2004

"Challenges & Opportunities In Launching Disruptive Life Science Technologies"

Speakers

John Holaday , Ph.D.
Founder
Entremed, Inc., Medicis Pharmaceutical Corporation, and Max Cyte, Inc.

Charles M. Fleischman
President, COO, CFO and Director
Digene

Meeting the challenges and opportunities in launching new life science technologies requires thinking creatively", said Dr. John Holaday at a recent lunchtime discussion, hosted by the US India Business Council at the US Chamber of Commerce building. He described several innovative uses of replacement technologies for cancer treatment and blindness prevention.

Serial entrepreneurs, Dr. John Holaday and Digene Director Charles Fleischman discussed the unique challenges they continue to face as life science entrepreneurs in setting out to displace established therapeutics and/or diagnostics. They described the economic ripple effects that their technologies have had on existing markets, and focused on the strategies they have employed to both achieve adoption in the health care sector and to convince skeptical investors and regulators. Dr. Holaday has worked in anti-angiogenesis therapeutics, an approach of inhibiting the formation of blood vessels, which supply cancerous tumors. He is currently Chairman of HarVest Bank of Maryland, an emerging source of capital to local biotechnology firms. " Good drugs often end up on shelves because of obstacles", such as "existing therapies, a shortage of data and poor funding", said Chuck Fleischman. John Holaday added that it takes "data to get dollars and dollars to get data."

Mr. Fleischman has been with Digene for fourteen years. He described Digene's test that detect Human Papillomavirus (HPV), the causative agent of cervical intraepithelial neoplasias, lesions that can develop into cervical cancer. Thus, Digene's HPV test can predict the presence of pre-cancerous lesions, which can be destroyed before they develop into cancer. The only HPV test approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Digene's HPV test is almost 100% accurate compared with the conventional PAP test which is known to be 54% -84% accurate. The human analysis required to read PAP tests is not needed for Digene's tests. Furthermore, many more HPV tests can be run at once, reducing the role of the lab technician in the process of detection. Mr. Fleischman pointed out that this kind of testing will be very helpful and effective in places where the population is served by medical organizations with less clinical infrastructure, as well as the more affluent countries where it can be used in conjunction with the PAP Smear to detect and help eliminate cervical cancer. He advised women to ask for the test at their next check-up. This replacement technology is an estimated one billion dollar opportunity for the company. It also might replace an existing technology and reduce the number of lab workers needed to evaluate that older technology. While this new diagnostic test creates change along with loss of jobs and income for the practitioners of the old technologies, it will detect the precursor of this deadly disease and significantly reduce the incidence cervical cancer worldwide.