Ista Pharmaceuticals: Rising Above - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing - Inside Healthcare

When Dr. Vicente Anido, Jr. became president and CEO of California-based Ista Pharmaceuticals in 2002, the ophthalmic pharmaceutical company had one product in its portfolio and was running low on funds. When the company’s one product didn’t make it through the third phase of clinical trials, Ista was still losing money, and its stocks dropped from $7.00 per share to $.30 per share.

Dr. Vicente Anido, Jr., President

“We were suddenly looking at whether we could survive, if we should tell everyone to go home, if we should set up a shell company to acquire other businesses that wanted to go public, or if we should simply shut our doors,” said Anido.

That April, one of the bankers Anido was working with called him up laughing because he’d found a company in worse shape than Ista. Although at the time Anido wasn’t laughing along, looking back, he can smile when he says the banker was right. The three-person company had, due to prior relationships, convinced a Japanese company to give it the option to bring two of its drugs to the US. However, the company needed a $1 million payment to keep the drugs.

“Ista had $5 million left in the bank. The other company hadn’t been able to raise the $1 million, and it owed creditors about $300,000,” said Anido. “We bought that company for about $300,000, made the $1 million option payment to the Japanese company, and kept the drugs.”

The company had a third, smaller drug in its portfolio as well. Ista was able, with the acquired company’s three drugs and one Ista had under its belt, to raise $44 million. Throughout 2003 and 2004, Ista developed the NDAs (new drug applications) and sent them to the FDA. Between 2004 and 2005, three of Ista’s pharmaceuticals were approved, and the second phase of Ista’s story began.

“We started a 28-person sales force in 2004 to launch the first product, and as other products came online, we increased the size of that sales force,” said Anido. “Today, we have 105 sales representatives around the country.”

In comparison to larger pharma companies, a 105-person sales force doesn’t sound like a lot, but Anido isn’t worried. Although many of Ista’s larger competitors have multiple similarly sized sales forces, the company has been effectively competing in the ophthalmic pharma industry since 2005 and is now one of the fastest growing companies in its industry.

Balancing it out
Clear proof of this competitive edge came at the end of 2006 when Ista’s major product, Xibrom, kicked in. Although it took roughly a year to get the sales and marketing force going, Anido said one year is not a long time to get the company’s 75 employees educated on a disease state they hadn’t handled before.

“Overall, the company was new to ophthalmology,” said Anido. “Although many of us had a basic understanding of opthalmology, many of us had no formal experience with it.”

The key was in a strategic hiring process. Having worked at Alergan, a multi-specialty healthcare company, in the past, Anido had industry contacts with experience in sales, marketing, and business development. For example, Tom Mitro, now Ista’s vice president of sales and marketing, had experience in developing sales forces in the ophthalmology and dermatology sides of the business. But not all senior team members had ophthalmic experience. Ista’s head of clinical research and medical affairs had therapeutic experience but not in ophthalmology. This is where Ista’s patient-centric marketing approach came into play.

“Rather than focusing on product characteristics, we shift those messages to answering questions about what our products will do for our customers’ patients,” said Anido. “When we focus on the patient, our sales reps are able to develop great relationships with physicians. In many cases, we introduced members of our team to physicians who allowed them to do preceptorships.”

A combination of experienced leaders and an ability to introduce employees to medical professionals pushed many up the learning curve quickly. And the balanced philosophy holds true throughout the organization. If a group within Ista’s infrastructure is light on ophthalmology experience, the next person hired for that group will have heavier ophthalmology experience.

“Our vice president of medical affairs and clinical research hired two or three new directors reporting to him, all of whom had ophthalmology experience. In fact two of them are ophthalmologists,” said Anido. “One was trained at McGill in Canada, and the other was trained in Israel. They brought a lot of ophthalmology experience to the table. That’s how we balance it out.”

Company-wide accountability
Today, Ista is considered one of the fastest growing ophthalmic pharmaceutical companies in the nation, and its main product, Xibrom, is one of the fastest growing ophthalmic pharmaceuticals. Anido has been careful to not grow the company too fast, but as it does progress, the company’s infrastructure will play a key role in maintaining the quality of Ista’s products and customer service.

“Rather than hiring a bunch of soldiers, we hired a bunch of generals right off the bat,” he said. “We wanted people who could grow with a fast-growing organization. Everyone in my vice president group has run organizations far larger than the one we’re asking them to run here. Even if we doubled or tripled in size, we have the management infrastructure and the experience to handle it.”

At some point in the future, Anido would like to transition Ista into manufacturing, but for now, he’s satisfied with Ista’s current product pipeline (which now includes three products on the market and eight others being researched) and the structure of accountability each of the 250 employees buy into.

“We don’t have very many layers. I know who the major players are on each project. Some folks like the environment of larger companies where they can hide and aren’t held accountable. Here everyone is accountable. Everyone makes a difference,” he concluded.

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