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Bringing novel medical dermatology treatments to millions of children and adults

Ted White is President and CEO of Verrica Pharmaceuticals, a late-stage biopharmaceutical company. Headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Verrica is committed to the development and commercialization of novel medical dermatology treatments. The company is currently developing its lead product candidate, VP-102, for the treatment of two diseases: 1. molluscum contagiosum, a highly contagious viral skin infection that affects approximately six million people, primarily children, in the United States; and 2. common warts.

EDWIN WARFIELD: When did you start to think Verrica had developed a potentially world-changing treatment?

TED WHITE: One of the big milestones for the organization was the completion of our Phase 2 clinical trials, which showed that cantharidin—which has been around since 1950 to treat both molluscum contagiosum as well as common warts—was effective. That gave us the proof of concept to move into the Phase 3. Obviously we wanted to raise the money to make sure that we had enough financing to start those clinical trials for our Phase 3 pivotal trials.

Molluscum contagiosum has a prevalence in the U.S. of 6.1 million patients. As I mentioned, there are no FDA-approved therapies. This is a highly contagious viral skin disease that is spread by skin-to-skin contact, articles of clothing, and playground equipment. Often, it’s picked up at swimming pools. There’s a huge social barrier to molluscum contagiosum and it’s more so on the parents, because the children aren’t allowed to play in extracurricular activities, they are withheld from school activities, because this is such a spreadable disease. Often, the child will scratch or pick at the lesion and then touch other parts of their body where they autoinoculate themselves, so it’s a disease that new crops appear each time. And with no FDA-approved therapies Verrica has the opportunity to become the standard of care.

Q. What part of the treatment is patentable?

A. There are no patents on the molecule. Cantharidin is a vesicant. It is a blistering agent. It comes from a beetle that is harvested in China. You might have heard people refer to “beetle juice.” Since it’s a natural source, there is no patent on the compound itself, but our patents will be on our single-use applicator that we use to administer the product.

Q. How did you achieve funding throughout the process?

A. To get our funding started first in our Series A from PBM Capital—which is a private venture capital firm based in Charlottesville, Virginia led by Paul Manning, a very successful entrepreneur. And then our Series B funding was with Perceptive. And then in our final Series C funding we were able to get Perceptive to come in again, as well as OrbiMed. Perceptive and OrbiMed are two very well-respected funds in the biotech industry.

Q. How have people living with these diseases responded to Verrica’s innovations?

A. The recruitment of our Phase 3 pivotal trials was beyond my expectations. One of my concerns going into these trials was the fact that you have to recruit primarily children ages 2 to 14 into a clinical trial with a product that causes a blister. Most parents are not willing to put a child into a clinical trial. I used a service called Galen, which is a patient recruitment service for clinical trials. We hired them. What was amazing was that after seven to eight business days, we had to turn this service off because there were too many patients. We had already exceeded the number of patients in the trial, which was well over 500.

I think the fact that we completed our Phase 3 clinical trials two months ahead of schedule, it really speaks to two things. Number one, it speaks to the high, unmet need that there are no FDA-approved therapies for. Number two, it speaks to how significant this disease is in the US.

Q. Where do you see Verrica five years from now?

A. My vision for Verrica is to be a fully integrated dermatology company with a full portfolio. Right now, we have one asset with multiple indications, which we are building a franchise around, but we are actively seeking to bring in new assets to the company to build out the pipeline.

Connect with  Ted on LinkedIn.

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ABOUT NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NKF's 15,000 professionals operate from more than 400 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

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