enmd in Washington Post
Article about John Holaday
washtech.com
The Biotech Crossroads
By Staff,
Washington Techway
Monday, October 22, 2001; 3:49 PM
After 21 years at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, John W. Holaday left his job as a federal scientist to help start the cancer-drug development company EntreMed a decade ago. The Rockville company has three drugs in clinical trials that, simply put, are designed to block growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. EntreMed also is looking at ways the drugs can be used to treat other disorders. Holaday, 56, EntreMed's chairman and chief executive, holds a doctorate in neuropharmacology from the University of California, San Francisco.
Investment in Biotechnology
I see new enthusiasm. You can only sit on the bottom so long before people have to think, 'there are opportunities here.' As we've had a chance to talk to people in the venture community, all the way up to investment bankers, there is a new resurgence of interest, it seems to me, in biotechnology.
All along, the beauty of biotechnology is as you invest in companies, you also invest in health care ... it's the dual benefit of doing well by doing good. [Information technology] is also a worthy investment but the time horizons are shorter in IT than in biotech, so we're looking for patient investors who want to buy low and stay for the ride.
The Decline in Tech Stocks
We've all taken it on the nose. If you looked at the tracking of the biotech indices and the tracking of EntreMed stock, it's exactly parallel. ...It hurts our industry mainly if you are out there raising money. If you're not raising money, it's not so relevant. But certainly we would like to have
this sector be recognized once again for the opportunities that we provide. If we value our products with net present-value equations, and discount them heavily for the likelihood of success or failure, you come up with market caps that are far more justified, and far higher, than the ones that are presently the ones being put together. ...
Things will change. I think there will be a renewed interest in the field, because I think we are sitting at the bottom right now. ... I'm not an economist, I'm trained in the sciences, so I work on the right of the decimal [point] rather than the left of the decimal, but I would suggest that perhaps in the second quarter of next year we will see a real resurgence in biotech investment.
EntreMed's Cash Position
Like many biotech companies, we're not sitting there with a real flush bank account, but we've got more than enough to see us through well into our Phase II [clinical drug trial] studies and well into next year.
The Next Step in Business Development
We're on the cusp of transitioning from a research-and-development company into one that's going to be fully integrated, that understands the commercialization, and in order to achieve that we hired an exceptional individual, Neil Campbell, who ran business development at Celera [Genomics in Rockville]. As a consequences of his having joined ... we're reinforcing business development.
Finding Business Partners
We have five different active discussions under way right now that I think are very encouraging. Since we've got such depth of drug-development opportunities with Endostatin, Angiostatin and Panzem and different ways of delivering those - like Endostatin as a protein or as a gene - which offers different opportunities for partnering. And also, as a platform, emphasizing oncology always. ... For us, managing this panoply of opportunities in terms of partnering is a primary focus in the coming three to six months - big, small and medium-sized companies.
A Cancer Cure
In the field of cancer, where I have personally experienced the loss of family members through the years and can feel it viscerally, one has got to have a better way of creating a realistic expectation for opportunity. So we have tried not to play up, we've tried not to promote, we've tried to make science speak.
Conditions at the FDA
I think they're better and they're worse. The absence of leadership there has resulted in somewhat of a delay in the evaluation of drug candidates through the process. So we all need to have a Food and Drug Administration head urgently. But things have gotten better from the point of view of the ability to fast-track and the time that it takes from the filing of applications until their approval. We don't have enough statistics over the last six months, since our Food and Drug Administration has lacked a head, to say whether that's going back up because of the absence of leadership. But certainly until six months or a year ago, the record was showing that the Food and Drug Administration was doing a better, and more efficient job, of evaluating new drug applications and product license agreements.
Maryland as a Biotech Center
We, as an industry, have grown a lot because of the foresight of certain leaders, Doug Duncan being among them as the [Montgomery] county executive and his predecessor [Charles] Gilchrist, who set aside land against the wishes of many of the taxpayers [in the Shady Grove Life Sciences campus in Rockville.] ...
The state is beginning to become more biotech-friendly. It's still got a long ways to go. But nonetheless I think they are realizing the value that we bring not only in patient care and health benefits but also employment opportunities, and are looking to be more aggressive in supporting the growth of the industry. Putting together those two ingredients means that we can expect a lot more growth in biotech in the Maryland area, above and beyond Montgomery County.
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