Cameron Durrant

Dr. Cameron Durrant: Cameron is an accomplished pharmaceuticals/biotech entrepreneur, marketer, financing, business and corporate development professional with a strong medical/clinical base as an MD. He has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 22 years and in medical practice for 8 years prior. He has served as board chairman and director and operated as CEO or interim CEO, as well as CFO, for both private and public companies, including PediaMed Pharmaceuticals, Spherics, Anavex (public), PediatRx (public) and ECR Pharmaceuticals (the spec pharma subsidiary of Hi-Tech Pharmacal). Most recently, as a corporate officer of Hi-Tech and CEO of the ECR division, he was involved in the $640MM all cash sale to Akorn and oversaw a turnaround of the division, increasing sales 50% and getting to profitability in a year.                                         In CEO and CFO roles, he has acted as Chairman, Treasurer and Chief Accounting Officer and convened, sat on or chaired audit, nominating, governance and special board committees. He has been an executive at blue-chip big pharma, including Johnson and Johnson, Pharmacia Corporation (until the acquisition by Pfizer), GSK and Merck. He is a founding director of Bexion Pharmaceuticals, a private company with a Phase I, novel lipid/protein nanotech oncology therapeutic and a board member of Alcyone Life Sciences, a private medical device company. He has served as a founding investor, Chairman, CEO and CFO of PediatRx (a public company), Executive Chairman and CEO of Anavex (a public company), former Chairman of Pressure Point (a medical device company now with an FDA-cleared, revenue-generating product, also about to receive registration in Europe, China and India),  former CEO of PediaMed Pharmaceuticals (acquired in part by Connetics Corporation and also Tiber Labs), former board member of Topaz Pharmaceuticals (acquired by sanofi-aventis) and a former founding investor in Prism Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Baxter). He has been involved in 5 exits, ranging from a 2-9x return. Cameron has been an advisor to Microsoft Corporation, Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, Pilgrim Software (acquired by a private equity group) and PathXL. He has also been involved in creating four companies around targeted early-stage technologies with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and assisted several private equity groups in their diligence efforts. He has raised approximately $60MM in VC, private equity, angel and high net worth financings. Cameron earned his M.D. from the Welsh National School of Medicine, Cardiff, UK, his DRCOG from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, London, UK, his MRCGP from the Royal College of General Practitioners, London, UK, his DipCH from the Melbourne Academy, Australia and his MBA from Henley Management College, Oxford, UK. Prior to his career as an entrepreneur, he held sales, marketing, strategy, BD, planning and operations roles with Merck and Co. in the UK, GSK for the UK and globally, Pharmacia Corporation for the US and globally and Johnson and Johnson globally. He has launched or held commercial responsibility for 7 brands which achieved blockbuster status (>$1Bn in annual sales) and launched 20 brands, many of them category leaders. Cameron’s areas of expertise include deal-making/company match-making, fundraising, public company governance, BD and corporate development, sourcing and executing complex partnerships, alliance management and strategic marketing, particularly in the areas of infectious diseases, pediatrics, dermatology and Alzheimer’s disease. He has also built development and commercial organizations from the ground up in the US and partnerships and commercial strategies in key ex-US markets. He was the 2005 winner of the Ernst and Young Ohio and Kentucky ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ winner and a national finalist, named in the PharmaVoice 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010 list of one of the ‘100 most inspiring people in the pharmaceutical industry’ and by Pharmaceutical Executive in 2008 as part of the ‘Change generation – young leaders to watch in pharma’.