Tennessee Right Prescription for Pharma Outfits
Published Apr 07, 2002
Tennessee’s strategic location, its wealth of health-care talent that includes world-class researchers, and its entrepreneurial know-how have put the state on the pharmaceutical industry’s map. From Memphis to Bristol, drug makers and marketers are finding Tennessee a prescription for success.
First there are the pharmaceutical giants – GlaxoSmithKline and King Pharmaceuticals in Bristol, Bayer Pharmaceutical Division near Memphis, Eli Lilly & Co. in Knoxville. Then there are the smaller yet rapidly growing operations like Nashville’s Cumberland Pharmaceuticals, which acquires the rights to branded, prescription products and markets them to physician specialists.
A.J. Kazimi, Cumberland’s chief executive officer, says the company is “fortunate to be located in Tennessee, where we can help pioneer a new industry – biopharmaceuticals. We benefit from being close to Vanderbilt University and its research expertise, which is relevant to several of our areas of interest.”
In fact, Cumberland Emerging Technologies (CET) is a joint initiative between Cumberland Pharmaceuticals, Vanderbilt and the Tennessee Technology Development Corp. CET was founded to help commercialize the university’s research, from navigating the maze of federal regulations and accessing federal funding to manufacturing and distribution. Kazimi says the Nashville Health Care Council and the state Department of Economic and Community Development “are dedicated to providing an environment which will encourage the growth of the new biopharmaceutical industry – and companies like our own.”
Milton Ellis agrees. Ellis is president of Nashville-based Rare Disease Therapeutics, affiliated with a consortium of orphan pharmaceutical companies around the globe. Orphan drugs are pharmaceuticals developed for rare diseases. Such drug needs are usually ignored by major drug makers, but thanks to advantages resulting from federal legislation in the mid-1980s, developers and marketers of orphan pharmaceuticals are carving a financially comfortable niche today. Rare Disease Therapeutics received the federal Food and Drug Administration’s first pharmaceutical approval of 2002 for a drug to treat a very rare and usually fatal liver disorder in children.
Ellis, a former executive of Bristol-Myers, is originally from Memphis and is also a University of Tennessee graduate. He chose to launch his venture in Tennessee “because this is just a great place to live.”
He points to North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, where about 42,000 employees work daily in cutting-edge research and development, much of it pharmaceutical and biotech-related, as an example of what he believes Tennessee can accomplish. “If they can do it in North Carolina, we can do it here,” he says.
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
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