A past feature from the Colorado Bioscience Assocation newsletter archive:

Replidyne is quickly becoming a major player in Colorado's bioscience community.

After closing one of Colorado's largest 2005 private financing deals in September -- more than $62 million in newly secured funding -- Replidyne is quickly becoming a major player in the state's bioscience community. The Louisville biopharmaceutical company has raised over $121 million and lots of eyebrows since it was founded in 2002.

Replidyne develops and commercializes new antibiotics to treat infections caused by drug resistant bacteria. Resistance to antibiotics is a major challenge facing healthcare providers. Stories about mutating staph infections can cause fear among hospital patients and worry for even the most experienced doctors.

"It is a major issue," said Ken Collins, Replidyne's president and CEO. "Big pharma is focusing on blockbuster drugs and less on antibiotics. We determined there was a large unmet medical need and we made that our core technology."

Collins was with Pegasus Technology Ventures in Boulder in 2001 when he helped Replidyne secure seed money and its initial venture funding round. He became president and CEO in 2002 and put together an impressive management team that made later rounds of financing possible. He also helped the company develop a lucrative pipeline by
inlicensing products from other companies, a business strategy that Collins knows is a key to Replidyne's success.

"To finance a biotech company today you need later stage programs and products;" he said. In June 2003, Replidyne acquired the rights to an antibacterial program developed by GlaxoSmithKline that is nearly ready for clinical trials. The company plans to take REP 8839, a topical antibacterial used against staph infections and one of the compounds from the GSK program, into clinical trials in early 2006.

Replidyne's lead product is Faropenem, an oral antibiotic that has completed Phase III clinical trials as a treatment for community respiratory tract diseases such as sinusitis, bronchitis and pneumonia. Licensed from a Japanese company, Faropenem is the first oral penem available outside Japan.

"We believe that Faropenem could be a very important development for millions of people with bacterial respiratory infections. If approved by the FDA, Faropenem, could be launched late next year." Collins said. In anticipation, Replidyne is developing a marketing partnership to reach physicians who treat these indications.

Collins says the most important things a young company can do to position itself for success are to have a good business plan, bring in an experienced management team, secure venture capital funding, and use late stage products to jumpstart financing.

"There is clearly money out there for good ideas, but it takes some effort," he said.

He credits Replidyne's success to the ability to bring in late-stage products that are close to market and to its experienced management team that includes respected industry veterans like chief medical officer Roger Echols, MD, and chief commercial officer Pete Letendre, PharmD. Both brought the company the kind of credibility sought by venture capitalists.

Although Collins says that Colorado's bioscience community is smaller than Boston or San Francisco, he believes that as more companies like Pharmion, Myogen, Globelmmune and Replidyne gain the attention of big pharma, it should make it easier for new Colorado companies to find investors. It should get even easier in the near future as the products in Replidyne's pipeline enter the market.

Note: This article is reprinted by permission from the Fall 2005 issue of The CBSA FOCUS newsletter. A link to a pdf of the entire issue is found below.