Biotech Values

[Mufaso]

RVNC

I haven't been able to find another instance of a pre-commercial biotech company hiring its senior commercial team as early as two years prior to launch. If anyone knows of such a case, please post.

I can think of one where they started too late.

It was from the 90's so few will probably remember it. Duramed's Cenestin was a plant based conjugated Estrogen. Originally Duramed was going for generic status with their product as after all the active ingredient was the same as what was in Wyeth's Premarin aka PREgnant MARes urINe. The FDA led Duramed on and at the last minute in the approval process as a generic said it was not the same so it could not be approved as a generic. Duramed reapplied with an NDA and got approved as a new different Drug relatively quickly in a FDA kind of way (18mos- 2 Years as I recall). By the time Duramed got a sales team together when they got approved, they got crushed and never got great sales. Eventually Duramed got bought out more resources were thrown at it but the drug never overcame it's bad start.

As a side note - There is a lot of similarity from the Cenestin story applicable to what RT002 faces vs Botox i.e. small company going it alone vs big company, pure modern drug with no bad stuff vs drug with impurities. (Wyeth claimed that it was unknown whether some of the stuff from the horse urine which ended up in PREMARIN had a part in the MOA !!) At the end of the day- it didn't matter to consumers/doctors what the extra stuff in PREMARIN was.