Orexo's stock market move sends positive signal for biotech industry
After a couple of rough years in the biotechnology sector, things are finally looking up again. The news that Uppsala-based Orexo is to list on the stock market -making it one of the few listed Swedish biotech companies - sends a positive signal for the future.
Orexo can look back on ten successful years since it was founded. The company's innovative business model is one factor that sets it apart from its competitors.
"When we started out, we decided to go about things differently", says Thomas Lundqvist, the company's Executive Vice President, who has been at Orexo from the start. "Pharmacists often don't see the patient and that's where we identified a niche".
The company's strategy aims to look beyond drug discovery and focus on existing products.
"We look at the target from a different perspective, starting with the need of the patient", explains Zsolt Lavotha, CEO of Orexo. "We look at drugs that have proven to be good and try to identify an unmet therapeutic need.".
After having identified the suboptimal characteristics of the drug, existing substances are combined with Orexo?s drug delivery platform in order to develop a more efficient product.
"By being product-based and not platform-driven, we have short development times and can produce cheaper and with low risk", says Zsolt Lavotha.
This method has proven to have significant advantages over common methods and helped Orexo to develop fast. "We now have one product out on the market and five in development", says Orexo's CEO. "Only three years ago there was only one product in the development phase", he adds.
It is hoped that the stock market listing will help Orexo grow even faster. Two more products are expected to enter the market between 2007 and 2008.
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