Enzon Chief Financial Officer Craig Tooman explains how the pharmaceutical company has transformed itself from a sleeping giant to an exciting company with the dynamism and excitement of a startup.
Written by Emmet Cole and produced by James McCann
New Jersey-based Enzon Pharmaceuticals is a 25-year old startup. The Enzon name is associated with a track record of creating proven and successful proprietary products, but it has undergone a transformation in recent years, giving the company a dynamic edge in a competitive market – and annual revenues approaching $200 million.
“Enzon is really like a big startup company. It has all the history and all the heritage. It has the foundation of a great technology platform. And yet it also has a completely new sense of enthusiasm for innovation,” says Craig Tooman, Enzon CFO, who arrived at the company with CEO Jeffrey Buchalter in 2004.
Buchalter and Tooman had been together on the forefront of pharmaceutical innovation at two stops before Enzon, first at Pharmacia Corporation, and then at ILEX Oncology, Inc. When the pair first arrived at Enzon, they saw that it was a shell of what it could be. Disorganized and debt-ridden, Enzon was a corporation living off past achievements –heavily reliant on its PEGylation product and with very little product pipeline, says Tooman.
“Through our strategic planning with the board we decided to start reinvesting in the company. That hadn’t been happening, but we needed to take that step to rebuild the pipeline,” he says.
Recharged, streamlined and bursting with innovation, Enzon is now back on the forefront of the fight against cancer, researching new oncology products and moving beyond its historical dependency on PEGylation.
PEGylation
Since the company’s inception in 1981, Enzon’s biggest selling product – and the basis of its reputation…
To read the full article, click here
Bookmark with:
- Digg
- Reddit
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Newsvine
Sign Up to Exec UK now for FREE!