Juniper Pharma, a Successful Massachusetts Biotech Company of Which You’ve Never Heard

October 29, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

BOSTON – The name Juniper Pharmaceuticals may not ring many bells for the average pharma watcher, but the company actually has a long history of pharmaceutical development – just under a different company name.

Until April this year, Juniper spent more than a decade known as Columbia Laboratories. But, the Boston Business Journal reported Juniper has quietly become one of the best performing publicly-traded biotech firms in Massachusetts. For more than 20 years Juniper, as Columbia Laboratories, was listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market, but last week the company made the jump to the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Frank Condella, Juniper's chief executive officer, said the move to the bigger listing “will improve the visibility of our stock and provide us with greater exposure to a broader base of institutional investors.”

"This achievement reflects the execution of our strategy to build long-term value for shareholders from our core operations and through the development of an expanded product portfolio,” Condella said in a statement.

Since the beginning of the year, Juniper’s shares have grown 115 percent since the start of the year, making it the second-best performing pharmaceutical stock in Massachusetts this year, the Journal reported. The company relocated to The Bay State in 2013. Juniper’s stock is down this morning, trading at $11.86 per share.

Juniper has a commercially approved product, Crinone 8%, a progesterone gel, which is marketed by Allergan , Inc. in the U.S. and by Germany-based Merck KgaA in over 90 countries worldwide. Crinone generates about $24 million in annual sales, the Journal said.

Juniper’s name change came about as part of an effort to rebrand the company as a women’s health company, George Elston, Juniper’s chief financial officer, told the Journal.

Juniper is advancing its lead candidate COL-1077, a 10 percent lidocaine bioadhesive gel intended as an acute use anesthetic for minimally invasive gynecologic procedures, through Phase II trials. With an estimated five to six million gynecological procedures performed annually in the United States, Juniper said that represents “a significant need for a safe and effective localized anesthetic for these patients.” Common minimally-invasive gynecological procedures COL-1077 could be approved for as an anesthetic include a cervical biopsy, an endometrial biopsy and a hysteroscopy, the company said on its website.

A Phase II trial with 150 patients studying the efficacy and safety of a single dose of COL-1077 for use as an acute anesthetic in women undergoing transvaginal pipelle-directed endometrial biopsy with tenaculum placement began in May 2015. The company said it plans to seek a partnership with other pharmaceutical companies for late-stage clinical trials and commercialization.

In March, Juniper licensed worldwide rights to an intra-vaginal ring, which has the ability to deliver drugs at different dosages and release rates within a single ring system, the company said. Drugs such as progesterone and leuprolide have already been tested using the technology and demonstrated sustained release for up to three weeks, Juniper said on its website.