Wyeth

But I would basically say, um, women have testosterone, and you're allowed to prescribe off-label.

How, how have I managed really treating women since the Women's Health Initiative trial, which was so poorly done and poorly conceived back 20, 25 years ago, which put millions of women at risk now? They were told we can't use hormones, but the truth of the matter is it was a poorly designed study, and I'm sure both of you from your p- careers understand that it's truth in advertising, and the problem is that Wyeth Ayerst c- owned the, the drug Premarin.

They called on every doctor.

It comes from, uh, pregnant mares' urine.

Hard to... put a number on that, but that infrastructure has facilitated research and clinical development that has resulted in spinouts from both Penn and CHOP and other schools in the area, Drexel and others.

And that has recruited other companies to come here to Philadelphia and The area historically has been known for eds and meds, right? Big Pharma, Merck, Wyeth, Airst, and GSK, and CentiCorps and many other companies.

So now if we talk about just cell and gene therapy, there's probably 50 plus companies in the cell and gene space in Philadelphia.

So about, I don't know, a decade ago, well, it was when Emily Whitehead was treated, I gave her parents a tour of the lab and I was trying to describe to them what we're building in Philadelphia.

The investigators didn't know which they were receiving.

And all the hormone therapy was provided by a single pharmaceutical company, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

And they all got the same thing.

There was no customization in this study.

business of healthcare technologies for most of my life, a few decades without going into a specific number of years, but many.

I grew up in the pharmaceutical industry, in the U.S. for Wyeth Laboratories as a senior scientist, then moved into marketing.

I was CEO of a number of companies.

I have a PhD in pharmaceutical technology and chemical engineering, an MBA in between, and again, chemical engineering from Columbia University to begin with.

And today I'm speaking with David Craig, co-founder, president and CEO at Sarco Matrix, a virtual preclinical company founded in late 2022 targeting rare neuromuscular diseases.

After graduating from South Dakota State University's pharmacy school, David took a job at Leader Labs, which became part of Wyeth and then Pfizer, but he left before that to become the fourth sales rep hired at Amgen.

From there, David served in executive sales and market access roles at, among other companies, Gilead, CV Therapeutics, AcelRx, which is now Telfera, Portola, Alexion, and he founded a life science consulting practice In other words, David has been around and been around the life sciences industry for a while.

He's seen a lot.

So when I got out of school, I did start at Letterly Labs.

And that is the...

They were consequently bought by Wyeth, et cetera, et cetera.

They're no longer around.