VDDI
Pharmaceuticals
Advances in synthetic chemistry and drug screening techniques have
flooded the pharmaceutical industry with potential new drugs. At
the same time, industry consolidation and financial pressures on
R&D budgets have reduced the ability of biotech and pharmaceutical
companies to develop early stage drugs. As a result of these market
forces, large pharmaceutical companies have restricted their drug
development activities to "blockbuster" drugs ($1 billion
revenues) with proven efficacy. Promising early-stage drugs developed
in emerging biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and university
research laboratories are being shelved.
VDDI Pharmaceuticals has been formed to capitalize on these opportunities. The Company
will license attractive product development opportunities from academic
institutions, biotech firms and pharmaceutical companies. VDDI Pharmaceuticals will
focus on pharmaceutical product opportunities where general proof-of-principle
has already been established in pre-clinical or human testing, and
where the products are novel and offer significant potential advantages
to products currently in the market or in development. VDDI Pharmaceuticals will
pursue early-stage products qualifying for fast track approval,
primarily in the areas of cancer, cardiovascular disease and infectious
disease and develop the products through Phase II of the required
regulatory approval processes. The developed products will be licensed
to existing pharmaceutical companies for product marketing, thereby
generating license fees and ongoing royalties for VDDI Pharmaceuticals.
As
its name suggests, VDDI Pharmaceuticals utilizes a virtual business model. Virtual
drug development entails: (i) a small core group of employees responsible
for strategic management, regulatory strategy, and financial control,
(ii) outsourcing all non-core business functions, including preclinical
and clinical drug development, and (iii) electronic data capture
and data submission to regulatory authorities. By adopting this
model, VDDI Pharmaceuticals believes it can reduce total drug development program
costs by at least 25% and development times by up to 50%.
VDDI Pharmaceuticals
is led by Dr. Stephen Porter, a recognized authority in virtual
drug development with over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical
industry. The Company has established relationships with a network
of world-class pharmaceutical development firms and consultants.
VDDI Pharmaceuticals has also assembled scientific advisory boards composed of internationally-recognized
researchers for each of its target therapeutic markets.
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