Smarter science.
Better health.
NEW YORK / TEL AVIV — 2018
RDD has completed enrollment to a pivotal Phase 3 study in Europe for the treatment of chronic anal fissure using RDD-1219 Capository™. In December 2017, an independent data monitoring committee reported no safety concerns and confirmed the company's sample size assumptions, recommending that no further enrollment is required.
RDD raised $9.54M in Series B funding in November 2017, of which $6M is from two new investors — Pharmascience, Inc. and Agate Medical Investments, an international life science fund. Existing investors OrbiMed and Capital Point also participated in this funding round.
Management
Jason Laufer, Chief Executive Officer
Jason is a seasoned veteran in the biopharmaceutical field, with early experience in clinical and regulatory affairs at Pfizer (PFE), and at a senior level, as Managing Director of CELLGRO®/Mediatech; acquired by Corning (GLW). Mr. Laufer, operating via the VIDA Group, has provided management consulting services to a range of European, US, and Israeli Pharma companies, and was appointed CEO of ELUTEX, a developer of drug-eluting stents. Prior to assuming the helm at RDD, Mr. Laufer managed Global Business Development and Licensing for URL Pharma, a specialty pharma company with a portfolio in gout (Colcrys), lipid regulation (Fibricor), antibiotics (Bactrim), malaria (Qualaquin) as well as a generic drug portfolio of 250 ANDAs. URL Pharma was acquired by Takeda Pharmaceuticals in 2012 for $800 million plus potential follow-on payments.
Nir Barak M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Founder
Dr. Barak’s career has focused on the integration of clinical medicine, basic research, and pharmaceutical development. He served as an attending physician in the department of internal medicine at Beilinson Hospital for 10 years.
Dr. Barak began engaging in drug development driven by feedback received from patients regarding shortcomings in available treatment options. Nir served as CSO and Founder of Obecure Ltd. — a company focused on re-purposing Betahistine as an anti-obesity agent. In 2008 after learning from patients of the dearth of treatment options for ano-rectal diseases, he founded RDD Pharma. Under Nir’s leadership, RDD has attracted significant investment from OrbiMed Advisors. — a multinational private equity fund.
Dr. Barak earned his MD from the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Clinical Nutrition.
Howard Rice, RPh, BPharm, Vice President — Pharmaceuticals
Howard brings 30+ years of pharmaceutical formulation and development experience to RDD. Mr. Rice serves as a Director at Tilary Ltd, the Israel agent for American Biotech Labs (USA) and is the Israel delegate to the Federation International Pharmaceutique (FIP) – an NGO within the World Health Organization (WHO). He served as Vice President of the FIP for 8 years, and he is the former Chairman of the Pharmaceutical Association of Israel.
Mr. Rice earned a B.Pharm from the School of Pharmacy, University of London.
Robert Niecestro, Ph.D. — Regulatory Advisor
Robert is the managing director of Accelapharm. He serves as the Head of Regulatory Affairs and Vice President of Axsome Therapeutics. Dr. Niecestro also serves as the Executive Vice President of Clinical & Regulatory at TG Therapeutics, Inc. He was a regulatory consultant to Stemline Therapeutics from 2006 until December 2012. Dr. Niecestro served as the VP Clinical & Regulatory Affairs at Keryx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., where he negotiated six SPA agreements and filed the NDA for ferric citrate. He has held executive and senior management roles at Andrx Laboratories, Eisai Inc. and Organon Inc. He has been involved in the filing of over 45 Investigational New Drug (IND) applications. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications and holds three patents.
Ariel Kamsler, Ph.D. — Director, Clinical Operations
Ariel joined RDD in 2014. He was previously with CTS Pharmaceuticals where he led all aspects of generic drug development. Prior to CTS, Dr. Kamsler was at Teva Pharmaceuticals – initially with the Advanced Drug Delivery group, and later with Teva Innnovative Ventures where he led due-diligence, project management and evaluation of new drugs.
Dr. Kamsler earned his PhD in Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute and was a post-doc at MIT in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Susumu Tonegawa.
Board of Directors
June S. Almenoff, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Chair
Dr. June Almenoff is an accomplished executive with 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. She recently served as President and Chief Medical Officer of Furiex Pharmaceuticals. During her 4-year tenure, the company’s valuation increased ~10-fold, culminating in its acquisition by Actavis plc for ~$1.2B. Furiex’s lead product, eluxadoline (Viberzi®), is a gastrointestinal drug approved in both the US and EU. Prior to Furiex, Dr. Almenoff was at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for 12 years where she held positions including Vice President in the Clinical Safety organization, chairing a PhRMA-FDA working group and working in the area of scientific licensing. Dr. Almenoff also led the development of pioneering systems for minimizing risk in drug development. Dr. Almenoff is currently a Director of TiGenix NV (Nasdaq: TIG) and Ohr Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: OHRP). She serves on the investment advisory board of the Harrington Discovery Institute, the advisory board of Redhill Biopharma (Nasdaq: RDHL) and of several private companies. Dr. Almenoff graduated AOA honors from the M.D.-Ph.D. program at the Icahn (Mt. Sinai) School of Medicine.
Nissim Darvish, M.D., Ph.D., Director
Nissim is a veteran of the life science industry, with 15 years of experience covering medical technology development, corporate leadership and investment management. He spent eight years with Pitango Venture Capital, where he was a General Partner managing life sciences investments. Previously, Nissim was the founder and CEO of Impulse Dynamics, which he led for six years, culminating in a $250 million realization event. Nissim obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. in Biophysics and Physiology from the Technion in Israel, and subsequently conducted his postdoctoral research at the NIH. He has published over 100 patents and authored over 20 publications.
Michael Rice, Director
Michael Rice is a Founding Partner of LifeSci Advisors and LifeSci Capital. Michael was the co-head of health care investment banking at Canaccord Adams, where he was involved in debt and equity financing. Michael is a former Managing Director at Think Equity Partners where he was responsible for managing Healthcare Capital Markets – including the structuring and execution of numerous transactions. Michael also served as a Managing Director at Banc of America specializing in large hedge funds and private equity healthcare funds. Previously, he was a Managing Director at JPMorgan/Hambrecht & Quist.
Isaac Israel, Director
Mr. Israel currently serves as CEO of Kitov Pharmaceuticals (TASE:KTOV). Isaac is also the Vice President of Business Development at Capital Point Ltd., a company focused on funding high-tech ventures, primarily in medical devices, biotechnology & environmental technologies. Mr. Israel founded and managed BeeContact Communications, a public company in the field of cellular communications and Uneri Capital, a company that provides financial and business consulting services to start-up companies.
Andrew Salzman M.D., Director
Dr. Salzman received his medical education at Harvard Medical School, and did his pediatric internship and residency at Columbia University. He founded and led the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital. Dr. Salzman invented and developed the first poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor (INO-1001) and the first adenosine 1 receptor agonist (INO-8875) to enter clinical trials. In addition to 175 peer-reviewed scientific publications, Dr. Salzman holds 40 patents in the fields of medicine, pharmacology, organic chemistry, and medical devices. Dr. Salzman founded and built Inotek Pharmaceuticals, a140-person biotech company, raised $80M in venture capital, and concluded a $600M license with Genentech. Dr. Salzman currently serves as Chairman of Radikal Therapeutics, Inc., Salzman Capital Ventures Ltd., and Respirometics Ltd.
Arie Giniger, Ph.D., Director
Dr. Giniger’s business career in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics fields spans more than 40 years. Beginning as a scientist with Schering Plough (USA), Dr. Giniger joined Taya Israel Cosmetic Company, first as a chemist and ultimately as Managing Director. He then joined Agis Group (Israel) as the Managing Director of their Careline Cosmetics division and then as Commercial Manager of the entire Agis Group. He is the founder of Private Cord Blood Bank, Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest umbilical cord blood bank. He received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Israel’s Technion in Haifa and holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Columbia University in New York.
Board of Directors
Nissim Darvish, M.D., Ph.D., Director
Nissim is a veteran of the life science industry, with 15 years of experience covering medical technology development, corporate leadership and investment management. He spent eight years with Pitango Venture Capital, where he was a General Partner managing life sciences investments. Previously, Nissim was the founder and CEO of Impulse Dynamics, which he led for six years, culminating in a $250 million realization event. Nissim obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. in Biophysics and Physiology from the Technion in Israel, and subsequently conducted his postdoctoral research at the NIH. He has published over 100 patents and authored over 20 publications.
Erez Chimovits, M.Sc., MBA, Director
Erez has 14 years of operational experience, including 10 years of senior managerial experience in public companies. Prior to joining OrbiMed, Erez was the CEO of NasVax (TASE:NSVX). NasVax acquired Protea and struck agreements with GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. Previously, Erez spent more than seven years with Compugen (Nasdaq:CGEN), as President, Compugen USA Inc. and Executive VP, Commercial Operations. At Compugen, he had P&L responsibility for more than 100 people and led multiple transactions with companies such as J&J, Novartis, Teva, Abbott, Medarex and others. Erez earned his MBA, M.Sc. in Microbiology and his B.Sc. from Tel Aviv University.
Giniger, Ph.D., Director
Dr. Giniger’s business career in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics fields spans more than 40 years. Beginning as a scientist with Schering Plough (USA), Dr. Giniger joined Taya Israel Cosmetic Company, first as a chemist and ultimately as Managing Director. He then joined Agis Group (Israel) as the Managing Director of their Careline Cosmetics division and then as Commercial Manager of the entire Agis Group. He is the founder of Private Cord Blood Bank, Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest umbilical chord blood bank. He received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Israel’s Technion in Haifa and holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Columbia University in New York.
Isaac Israel, Director
Mr. Israel currently serves as Vice President of Business Development at Capital Point Ltd., a company focused on funding high-tech ventures, primarily in medical devices, bio-technology, & environmental technologies. Mr. Israel also founded and managed Contact Communications, a public company in the field of cellular communications and Unree Capital, a company that provided financial and business consulting services to start-up companies. Isaac served as Vice President of Docnet and Head of Software Development at Selective.com.
Andrew Salzman M.D., Director
Dr. Salzman received his medical education at Harvard Medical School, and did his pediatric internship and residency at Columbia University. He founded and led the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Cincinnati’s Children`s Hospital.
Dr. Salzman invented and developed the first poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor (INO-1001) and the first adenosine 1 receptor agonist (INO-8875) to enter clinical trials. In addition to 175 peer-reviewed scientific publications, Dr. Salzman holds 40 patents in the fields of medicine, pharmacology, organic chemistry, and medical devices. Dr. Salzman founded and built Inotek Pharmaceuticals, a140-person biotech company, raised $80M in venture capital, and concluded a $600M license with Genentech. Dr. Salzman currently serves as Chairman of Radikal Therapeutics, Inc., Salzman Capital Ventures Ltd., and Respirometics Ltd.
RDD is a specialty pharma company developing targeted pharmacological treatments for diseases of the anorectal region such as anal fissures, fecal incontinence and pruritus ani. A pharmaceutical compound targeting radiation proctitis is in preclinical development as well.