Healthcare Industry News: Watson Laboratories
News Release - September 19, 2006
PhytoMedical Announces Appointment of Senior Pharmaceutical Executives to Board of Directors
Mr. Gary Branning and Mr. Rick A. Henson bring over 50 years of combined experience in all aspects of pharmaceutical development and commercialization, from successful start-ups to big pharma.PRINCETON, N.J.--(HSMN NewsFeed)--Sept. 19, 2006--PhytoMedical Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB:PYTO ; FWB:ET6) today announced the appointments of Mr. Gary Branning, Managing Partner and Sr. Vice President of Managed Market Resources and Mr. Rick A. Henson, Vice President, Sales, Vernalis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to the Company's Board of Directors.
"Together, these pharmaceutical executives bring over 50 years of combined experience in every facet of drug development and commercialization to our Board," stated PhytoMedical President and CEO, Mr. Greg Wujek.
"Gary's career spans nearly three decades of business development, finance and sales and marketing, including notable tenure with Parke-Davis and Pharmacia -- both companies since acquired by the world's largest pharmaceutical enterprise, Pfizer, Inc.
"Rick Henson brings us 27 years of global pharmaceutical experience, including management and executive positions with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies such as Ciba-Geigy, Andrx Pharmaceuticals, Watson Pharmaceuticals, and Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, the biggest privately-held drug company in the world," continued Mr. Wujek. "As President of a successful specialty pharmaceutical start-up, Rick successfully negotiated the company's sale to Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a multibillion dollar industry giant.
"I want to thank our outgoing Directors, Mr. Indy Panchi and Mr. Derek Cooper for their tireless efforts throughout our early research and development phase, and I'm proud to welcome Gary Branning and Rick Henson to our Board. These new appointments come at an important time in our growth, as PhytoMedical begins to move its compounds through the development path and towards commercialization," concluded Mr. Wujek.
Mr. Rick A. Henson:
Building Start-Ups, Launching New Drugs, and Growing Revenues.
Mr. Rick Henson has 27 years of pharmaceutical industry experience with extensive know-how in building pharmaceutical companies from the ground floor, including CoCensys, Inc., a CNS pharmaceutical specialty start up company. As President, Mr. Henson acquired products from big pharma companies, grew revenues from zero to tens of millions per year, and successfully negotiated the sale of the company to Watson Laboratories, a multibillion dollar industry leader.
At Watson Laboratories, Inc., Mr. Rick Henson served as Vice President, Sales & Marketing, where, while running the company's Neuropsychiatry division, Mr. Henson built the Primary Care sales division of 150 reps, leading to sales of approximately $70 million on two promoted products. During this period Mr. Henson supervised over 250 people, ultimately managing a Profit & Loss statement of over $300 million.
Mr. Rick Henson also served as Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President, Sales and Strategic Alliances at Vicus/PharmaPrint, Inc., where he helped the start-up company develop and implement a multimillion dollar joint venture agreement with a Chinese conglomerate in order to penetrate Pacific Rim markets.
Subsequently, Mr. Henson accepted appointment as Senior Vice President of Sales at Andrx Corporation where he built a 500-plus person branded sales division from inception. Among other achievements, Mr. Henson: managed the due diligence and acquisition of a product line which increased sales from only $2 million to over $25 million in the first year; took a new product launch from zero to $70 million in sales in two years; and increased division sales to $120 million. Andrx Laboratories was recently acquired by Watson pharmaceuticals for $1.9 billion.
Throughout his career, Mr. Rick Henson has held sales, marketing, district management, and regional director positions at several of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, including Ayerst Laboratories, Boehringer-Ingelheim, and Ciba-Geigy Pharmaceuticals (now Novartis).
Today, Mr. Henson is Vice President of Sales for Vernalis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a UK based, specialty biopharmaceutical and drug development company with marketed products for the CNS (Central Nervous System) market.
Mr. Gary Branning:
Adjunct Professor, Lecturer, and Industry Expert.
With 27 years of expertise in managed care, marketing, sales, strategic planning, business development, and finance, Gary Branning has an innovative approach to creating leading-edge programs and services with a primary focus on customer impact and corporate profitability. He is a national speaker on managed care and senior care marketing, and managed market trends.
Gary Branning is Managing Partner and Senior Vice President of Managed Market Resources, a health care consulting and medical communications company with offices in Chesapeake, VA and Morristown, NJ. Previously, Mr. Branning served as Senior Vice President of the Pharmaceutical Strategic Business Unit at Quintiles Informatics (now Verispan).
Over the course of 17 years, Mr. Branning held several positions at Parke-Davis, including managed care, marketing, sales, business development, and finance. Gary also served as Executive Director of Managed Markets Marketing for Pharmacia Corporation's Marketing Unit, a service organization focused on the development of brand programs, value added services and health management programs in managed markets. Both Parke-Davis and Pharmacia Corporation have been subsequently acquired in unrelated transactions by Pfizer, Inc.
Mr. Gary Branning is an Adjunct Professor at Rutgers Graduate School of Business, and Guest Lecturer at Blanche and Irwin Lerner Center for Pharmaceutical Management Studies.
Mr. Branning earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Wagner College (New York), and an MBA in Finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
About PhytoMedical Technologies, Inc.
PhytoMedical Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB:PYTO ; Frankfurt Stock Exchange: ET6), together with its wholly owned subsidiaries, is an early stage research based biopharmaceutical company focused on the identification, acquisition, development and eventual commercialization of innovative plant derived pharmaceutical and nutraceutical compounds targeting cachexia, obesity and diabetes.
An estimated 300 new drugs of world-wide importance, worth over $150 billion, still remain to be discovered amongst the 250,000 species of higher plants found on earth, of which less than 15% have been investigated for bioactive compounds. Presently, twenty of the best selling drugs come from natural sources and 25% of all prescription drugs contain active compounds originally derived from or patterned after compounds derived from plants.
BDC-03 Successful in Increasing Lean Muscle Mass and Reducing Body Fat Percentage
Named BDC-03, PhytoMedical's first plant derived compound has pharmacologically active elements that have been successful in reducing body fat percentage, increasing lean muscle mass and lowering cholesterol in a study of growing animals.
For obese or overweight individuals, BDC-03's potential capacity to decrease the deposition of fat and lower cholesterol would be a vitally important therapeutic outcome. However, its prospective ability to induce overall weight gain in the form of lean muscle mass may well be the difference between life and death for individuals suffering from cachexia.
Cachexia, which is characterized by dramatic weight loss, not only of fatty tissue, but also muscle tissue and bone, is among the most devastating and life-threatening aspects of AIDS and cancer. Once the body loses 30% of its lean muscle mass, major organs are affected, resulting in death.
Sadly, cachexia afflicts 25% of all AIDS patients and upwards of 90% of all advanced cancer patients. In fact, half of all cancer related deaths are a result of cachexia, not the cancer itself.
Polyphenolic Compounds Increase Sugar Metabolism by a Factor of 20
Diabetes, which results from the body's inability to produce enough insulin or use it efficiently, affects 18.2 million people in the United States, or 6.3% of the population (American Diabetes Association). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects this number to rise to over 30 million by 2030. As the leading cause of end-stage renal disease, blindness and lower limb amputations, diabetes now costs the health care system over $132 billion each year -- nearly one out of every ten health care dollars spent in the United States.
While the causes of diabetes are not entirely clear, it is known that diet plays a key role in the prevention and cure of diabetes. In fact, research studies have shown that aqueous extracts of the most commonly consumed spice, cinnamon, improves the action of insulin and helps to control risk factors associated with diabetes including, glucose, insulin, cholesterol, triglycerides and related variables.
A study published in Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association, showed that as little as one gram a day of cinnamon -- one-fourth of a teaspoon twice a day -- can lower blood sugar by an average of 18 to 29 percent, triglycerides (fatty acids in the blood) by 23 to 30 percent, LDL (or "bad") cholesterol by 7 to 27 percent and total cholesterol by 12 to 26 percent. Changes in HDL ("good") cholesterol were not significant. Amazingly, the study found that the beneficial effects of cinnamon lasted for at least 20 days after people stopped taking it.
Through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, PhytoMedical is working towards synthesizing the active components found in cinnamon and characterizing their beneficial health effects in cell cultures systems, animals and ultimately humans.
At present, the Company does not currently have commercial products intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. The statements contained in this press release regarding our ongoing research and development and the results attained by us to-date have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
For additional information, please visit www.PhytoMedical.com.
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Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
No statement herein should be considered an offer or a solicitation of an offer for the purchase or sale of any securities. This release contains forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations or beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions about future events. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements and the assumptions upon which they are based are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations and assumptions will prove to have been correct. Forward-looking statements, which involve assumptions and describe our future plans, strategies, and expectations, are generally identifiable by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "could," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "intend," or "project" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to numerous factors and uncertainties, including but not limited to adverse economic conditions, intense competition, lack of meaningful research results, entry of new competitors and products, adverse federal, state and local government regulation, inadequate capital, unexpected costs and operating deficits, increases in general and administrative costs, termination of contracts or agreements, technological obsolescence of the Company's products, technical problems with the Company's research and products, price increases for supplies and components, litigation and administrative proceedings involving the Company, the possible acquisition of new businesses or technologies that result in operating losses or that do not perform as anticipated, unanticipated losses, the possible fluctuation and volatility of the Company's operating results, financial condition and stock price, losses incurred in litigating and settling cases, dilution in the Company's ownership of its business, adverse publicity and news coverage, inability to carry out research, development and commercialization plans, loss or retirement of key executives and research scientists, changes in interest rates, inflationary factors, and other specific risks. We currently have no commercial products intended to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any disease. The statements contained in this press release regarding our on-going research and development and the results attained by us to-date have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. There can be no assurance that further research and development, and /or whether clinical trial results, if any, will validate and support the results of our preliminary research and studies. Further, there can be no assurance that the necessary regulatory approvals will be obtained or that PhytoMedical will be able to develop commercially viable products on the basis of its technologies. In addition, other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are discussed in the Company's most recent Form 10-QSB and Form 10-KSB filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These reports and filings may be inspected and copied at the Public Reference Room maintained by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission at 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20549. You can obtain information about operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission at 800-SEC-0330. The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission also maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission at http://www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward looking statements that may be made to reflect the events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.
Source: PhytoMedical Technologies
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