American Pharmed Labs Recruits new Leadership to Guide R&D, Marketing Efforts
American Pharmed Labs, Inc. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), a pharmaceutical company focusing on new forms of pain-relief therapy, has formed a medical advisory board composed of pain specialists who will provide APL with guidance on developing clinical trials and obtaining regulatory approvals for its emerging products. The company also announced the formation of a strengthened management team and the installation of a new board of directors.
Serving on the company's medical advisory panel will be Dr. Seymour Diamond, founder of the Diamond Headache Clinic in Chicago; Dr. Norman Marcus, chief of the Pain Treatment Program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York; and Dr. Abraham Sunshine, professor of clinical medicine at the NYU School of Medicine.
The members of the new management team are Peter Golikov, chief operating officer; Teresa Munk, executive vice president; Earle Lockhart, M.D., director of medical affairs; Jeffrey Garwin, M.D., Ph.D., medical affairs consultant; Karen Fassuliotis, Ph.D., director of regulatory affairs; Lawrence Klevans, Ph.D., business development consultant, and Richard Podell, chief financial officer.
"Several exciting products are in development, and as we come closer to bringing them to market it becomes important to add new depth and expertise to our company," said Rainer K. Liedtke, M.D., APL's founder, president and chief executive officer.
In addition to Liedtke, the company's new board of directors consists of Helmut M. Schuhsler, Ph.D., managing partner of TVM (Techno Venture Management), a leading venture capital group with offices in Munich and Boston; Ernst-Gunter Afting, M.D., Ph.D., managing director of a major German scientific research organization and former president and chief executive officer of Roussel Uclaf, as well as the former head of the pharmaceutical division and chairman of the divisional pharmaceutical board at Hoechst; Erik Hornnaess, a former senior vice president of Abbott Laboratories; and Nola E. Masterson, president of Science Futures, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in biotechnology issues. Golikov serves on the board as a non-voting member.
APL's product development efforts are based on a new concept of pain control. In this concept, analogous to a "biological internet," pain is viewed as biological information that is transmitted through an interactive "neural network" connecting the peripheral nerves with the central nervous system. APL's products use local anesthetics as "neural firewalls," which block the transmission of pain information from peripheral nerves to the pain processing center in the brain cortex.
The underlying approach to all of APL's products is the localized delivery of safe and proven anesthetic/analgesic agents. APL's proprietary products use the company's drug delivery technologies to release sustained doses of anesthetic/analgesic agents directly to terminal nerve receptors at the point of pain. The idea is to achieve pain relief without the disabling systemic effects associated with drugs that block pain by acting on the central nervous system.
"Scientists are beginning to understand how pain nerve activities are changed by the transmission of complex pain signals," said Dr. Liedtke. "The more pain signals they transmit, the more sensitive they become to subsequent pain signals. We believe that interrupting those pain signals at the source, with a topical anesthetic, represents a more effective approach than conventional treatments that cause negative systemic side-effects."
APL is currently conducting advanced regulatory and clinical work in the United States and Europe with several pain relief products, which it plans to bring to market in the U.S. and Europe within one to two years. The company's primary development efforts are focused on three product categories:
LidoPain is being developed for topical management of mild to severe pain. LidoPain is an over-the-counter skin patch designed to deliver a small, sustained dose of lidocaine directly on the pain point.
The Paintrol product line is under development for topical management of medium to severe pain. Paintrol TW is being developed as a prescription analgesic system for treating medium and severe pain associated with trauma and surgery. Paintrol HM is under development for the treatment of headaches, and Paintrol TV is being developed for the treatment of tinnitus and vertigo.
Orolip E is designed to be a new class of pain management therapies for the treatment of medium and severe pain. Orolip E will deliver sustained-release doses of enkephalins, which are naturally occurring biological analgesics.
Edited by Beth Brindle
For more information: Peter Golikov, Chief Operating Officer, American Pharmed Labs, 270 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632. Tel: 201-894-8980; Fax: 201 837-0200.