Lindsay Rosenwald – Her Journey into the Biosciences
Paramount Bio Sciences, LLC, a global healthcare investment and pharmaceutical development company, was founded and managed by Dr. Lindsay A. Rosenwald in 1991. The company facilitates drug development, scientific support, and is dedicated to to find and develop new therapeutic drugs with great potential. By evaluating promising drug candidates around the world, Paramount has been able to create, nurture and support more than 40 life sciences, academic, biotech and pharmaceutical companies over the past 19 years, including 20 in the last 48 months. Current portfolio The companies have more than 40 product candidates advancing through clinical trials.
Unique Approach to Biotech Investing
Business and product development are just two pieces of the Paramount puzzle. An Affiliate of Paramount Bio Sciences – Paramount Bio Capital, Inc., is a FINRA-registered broker-dealer that, among other activities, raises capital for Paramount Portfolio Companies. Raised over $1 billion for portfolio companies; several times that amount has been raised for Paramount Companies by other entities. While venture capital and private equity firms tend to be investment-oriented, Paramount’s bias is on the operational side. He sets up companies from scratch, using his own capital and eventually funds raised from various private and institutional investors through Paramount Bio Sciences and other Wall Street banks and brokers. To be sure, Paramount’s experience in finance and business helps make the model attractive to potential licensors and CEOs.
With Paramount Capital largely handling the accounting, finance, market analytics and legal functions, the managers of their Portfolio Companies can largely focus on driving drug candidates through the clinic and creating value for shareholders, licensors and the patient community.
Infrastructure and construction companies in Paramount
Paramount includes an extensive support infrastructure with expertise in licensing, clinical development, corporate operations, and navigating regulatory pathways. Each new company in the Paramount Bio Sciences portfolio is based on intriguing science and commercial potential. The Portfolio Companies are operated by Paramount Capital through dedicated world-class management at the company level, as well as clinical and business development and operations specialists working for Paramount in New York. Chelsea Therapeutics, for example, was initially created or founded by Dr. Rosenwald around a new antifolate that was being developed for the treatment of inflammatory conditions including rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriasis. Chelsea’s compound, CH-1504, has shown superiority in terms of safety and efficacy over methotrexate, the current standard treatment for RA, which has been found to elevate liver enzymes in many patients. Paramount Capital licensed this technology from the University of South Alabama and assembled a world-class management team to help optimize its formulation and advance the development of this and other compounds.
Another academic license from Paramount is a portfolio of organic arsenic trioxide compounds licensed from MD Anderson Cancer Center. This FDA approved compound progressed from IND to NDA in approximately 30 months and this is the fastest regulatory approval in FDA history. Trisenox, an inorganic alternative to arsenic trioxide, which can cause cardiac abnormalities in high doses. Unlike the inorganic version, organic arsenic trioxide shows no evidence of these problems, even when used at doses 20 times higher than Trisenox. To capitalize on that advantage, Dr. Rosenwald founded Ziopharm Oncology to promote this organic arsenic compound, ZIO-101, to treat cancer, including solid tumors, where mega-dosing has been shown to be effective. Ziopharm Oncology, as one of Paramount’s many portfolio companies, has subsequently been licensed and is developing several other anticancer agents.
Another Paramount portfolio company, founded and managed by Lindsay Rosenwald MD, is pharmaceutical company Keryx Bio. She is developing a compound called Sulonex, which is an oral therapy for diabetic nephropathy. It was licensed by the Alfa Wassermann Group, a private pharmaceutical company from Bologna, Italy. If approved, Sulonex will be marketed to 15 million people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and 1 to 2 million patients with type 1 diabetes.
