Ann: Opthea Announces Executive Leadership Changes & Senior Hires, page-2

The following is from an interview Dimerix CEO gave recently and is relevant to how Opthea is adjusting it's management team to the current needs and stage of development of the company. Given the calibre of personnel who have come on board with Opthea over the last 12 months this company has clearly convinced these people the company is on the pathway to having a successful commercial product.


The CEO of kidney drug play Dimerix (ASXXB) describes three “valleys of death” that drug developers need to traverse to get an approved product to market. The first, says Dr Nina Webster, is proving that the underlying science actually works, with this stage typically funded by government bodies or seed capital. The next crevasse – and the steepest one – is scaling up from an idea to a commercial proposition supported by late-stage human trials. Few biotechs reach the rickety bridge over the third valley, which is all about validating the results to gain regulatory approval to sell the drug – and getting adequate funding to do so. Webster says a common problem with early biotech plays is that management teams tend to be scientifically oriented and not well versed in the commercial nuances of drug manufacturing and approval processes.“Each stage needs a different team, so the one at the beginning won’t be the one at the end,” she says.