This is a printer friendly page!
Sunesis Pharmaceuticals has developed a
portfolio of cancer drug candidates that target the cell cycle, which gives preferentially
target cancer cells that are rapidly dividing
Healthcare
Biotechnology
(SNSS-NASDAQ)
Sunesis Pharmaceuticals Inc.
341 Oyster Point Blvd
South San Francisco, CA 94080
Phone: 650-266-3500
Eric H. Bjerkholt
Chief Financial Officer
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
April 20, 2006
BIO:
Eric H. Bjerkholt, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
Eric H. Bjerkholt has served as our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
since January 2004. From January 2002 to January 2004, Mr. Bjerkholt served as Senior Vice
President and Chief Financial Officer at IntraBiotics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Mr. Bjerkholt
is a co-founder of LifeSpring Nutrition, Inc., a privately held nutraceutical company, and
from May 1999 to March 2002 served at various times as its Chief Executive Officer,
President and Chief Financial Officer. From 1990 to 1997, Mr. Bjerkholt was as an
investment banker at J.P. Morgan & Co. Mr. Bjerkholt is a member of the Board of
Directors of Stem Cells, Inc., a publicly held biotechnology company, and a privately held
company. Mr. Bjerkholt holds a Cand. Oecon degree in Economics from the University of Oslo
and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Company Profile:
Sunesis is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery,
development and commercialization of novel small molecule therapeutics for oncology and
other serious diseases. Sunesis has built a broad product candidate portfolio through
internal discovery and in-licensing of novel cancer therapeutics. Sunesis is advancing its
product candidates through in-house research and development efforts and strategic
collaborations with leading pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies.
CEOCFO: Mr. Bjerkholt, what attracted you to Sunesis?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “The company was undergoing a transition
from being a tool based company with a novel approach to developing small molecule drugs,
and transitioning from that to becoming a product company with a full pipeline of
attractive anticancer products and collaboration products for other indications outside of
cancer. It was also a private company at the time and they needed a strategic financial
officer to come in and take the company to the next step in the financial evolution, which
turned out to be to take the company public. As a banker, I participated in a number of
IPOs though I had never taken a company public from the inside, so that was attractive to
me as well.”
CEOCFO: How has the
company changed since becoming public?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “Since I came here, I started preparing
the company to go public by putting in place the infrastructure required for a public
company. From that standpoint, many of the things we needed to be in place, were in place
by the time we went public. We have further developed skill sets and recruited additional
personnel for our finance organization, and also put in place additional policies and
procedures since going public, with a goal at the end of this year of being fully
Sarbanes-Oxley compliant.”
CEOCFO: Will you tell us
about the products and development in the works?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “Our most advanced product candidate is
called SNS-595; it is a novel cell cycle inhibitor and it is currently in two Phase II
trials for non-small cell lung cancer and small cell cancer. We also have it in Phase I
study for acute leukemia and later this year we plan to start a Phase II trial in ovarian
cancer. Our second product candidate is called a SNS-032; it is a novel CDK inhibitor; it
is an inhibitor of CDK 2, 7 & 9. Currently we have one trial that is ongoing, it is
Phase I/II dose escalation safety study in advanced solid tumors. In the second half of
this year, we will start a second trial, which will be a Phase I trial in B-cell
malignancies. Our third product candidate is called SNS-314; it is an Aurora kinase
inhibitor that is currently undergoing preclinical toxicology studies and the goal there
is to file an IND (Investigational New Drug application) before the end of this year and
commence Phase I clinical studies in early 2007.”
CEOCFO: What do these
drugs offer that is not available now?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “We have developed an expertise in the
cell cycle. Cancer cells are rapidly dividing and undergoing cell division or they are in
the cell cycle much more frequently than normal cells, so if you have drugs that target
the cell cycle, they will preferentially target cancer cells. While that is not a novel
approach, all of our product candidates are pursuing novel approaches through their
mechanism of action, that is how they work, or through the specific molecular target that
they are pursuing. For example, Aurora is an enzyme that is critical in the mitosis phase
of the cell cycle, which is where the cells actually divide and become two cells. There is
a lot of hope that an Aurora inhibitor can be a novel treatment for cancer with the same
effect that the taxanes have, for example Taxol® (Bristol Myers Squibb Company –
NYSE: BMY) without the devastating side-effects of those drugs.”
CEOCFO: How are you
running these studies?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “These three products are not partnered,
in the sense that we have worldwide commercial rights for all three and we control the
development of all three. Right now, there are no partnerships on those three, but over
time, we can see bringing in strategic partners to enable us to do more studies than we
can do on our own and benefit from the additional expertise a partner might bring but also
to alleviate the financial burdens of running larger and larger trials as the products
advance toward the market.”
CEOCFO: You have just
done a private placement; how far will that take you?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “On a proforma basis, as of the end of
2005, we had over $90 million in cash. The guidance that we are giving for our burn rate
is $7 to $ 9 million per quarter. If you take the mid point of that, we have
10 to 11 quarters of runway.”
CEOCFO: That is pretty
good!
Mr. Bjerkholt: “We are pleased with that and feel that
there may have been some financing overhang over our stock and we were approached by some
highly regarded investors with an interest in us as a company and we were able to leverage
that interest and create the financing that we announced by late last week.”
CEOCFO: Do you have
plans for how you will eventually commercialize these?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “Our vision is to become a fully
integrated pharmaceutical company with a commercial presence in North America. The
advantage of being focused on cancer, is that you could cover the majority of the cancer
marketplace in North America with a moderate sized sales force and so we think that it is
possible for a company with our resources to do that. We have the ambition of having the
commercial presence in North America.”
CEOCFO: What should
people expect for the next three years down the road?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “This year we have started or plan to
start 6 new clinical trials, so our midterm milestone is to see the results of those
trials and so if we see positive signals in some of these trials, we can then move on to
registration studies in 2007 and 2008. That is what is on the horizon for the next 12 to
18 months.”
CEOCFO: You mentioned
adding to your team; do you need to still add more people?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “In our development organization, we
still need to grow and add people. We are actively recruiting for people with skills in
regulatory and clinical trial design and management.”
CEOCFO: Why should
potential investors be interested now?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “We think there is a lot of momentum
across our pipeline and we have a unique portfolio of drugs, three of which we control the
development of. We have a number of milestones coming up over the next twelve to eighteen
months. Any positive signals from one of the six trials that I mentioned, could be
material for the company and take us to the next stage of our evolution.”
CEOCFO: Is there anything that people overlook about Sunesis
that they should realize?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “One thing that we are not able to give a
lot of visibility to is that we have several programs that are partnered with Merck &
Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK), Johnson & Johnson PRD (“J&J”) (NYSE: JNJ) and
Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB) Our partners do not like to talk about these programs at
the relatively early stage of development, so we are hoping we can achieve some meaningful
milestones in these programs over the next twelve months and thereby give more visibility
to them. One example is our collaboration with Merck around BACE Inhibitors, which is
viewed as an important player in how Alzheimer’s disease plays out. Reaching a
milestone there could be meaningful to the company and we are hopeful that we can achieve
that over the next twelve months. Of course there is risk and we may not achieve any
milestones, but we are hopeful.”
CEOCFO: Do you do much
to enhance your investor relations?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “We have a very active investor relations
program and it is important to us that we are active amongst investors and that they know
the story well. We are trying to reach out quite frequently and when people call us with
an inquiry, we always approach it very openly.”
CEOCFO: Is the investor
community taking notice?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “We hope so.”
CEOCFO: In closing, what
should people remember most about SUNIESIS?
Mr. Bjerkholt: “We have a portfolio of attractive
products with positive momentum right now. Underlying that, is a novel technology called
Tethering®, whereby we can develop novel small molecules in fragments. We have
partnerships we hope we can give more visibility to over the next twelve to eighteen
months. We have a very experienced management team that has now been working together for
several years.”
disclaimers
Any reproduction or further distribution of this
article without the express written consent of CEOCFOinterviews.com is prohibited.
|
