JAMESBURG, N.J., April 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Phytomedics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company merging health care and plant biotechnology to discover, develop, manufacture, and commercialize novel botanical therapeutics, announces the appointment of G. Steven Burrill to its board of directors.
“We are honored to have an industry visionary of Steve’s caliber join the Phytomedics board of directors,” said Dr. Bertold Fridlender, President and CEO of Phytomedics. “Steve is an internationally recognized expert and spokesman for the life sciences industry and is an extremely valuable addition to the Phytomedics team.”
G. Steven Burrill is CEO of Burrill & Company, a San Francisco-based life sciences firm with principal activities in Venture Capital, Merchant Banking and Media, and has been involved in the growth and prosperity of the biotechnology industry for over 35 years. An early pioneer, Mr. Burrill is one of the original architects of the industry and one of its most avid and sustained developers. Prior to founding Burrill & Company in 1994, he spent 28 years with Ernst & Young, directing and coordinating the firm’s services to clients in the biotechnology/life sciences/high technology/manufacturing industries worldwide. In 2002, Mr. Burrill was recognized as the biotech investment visionary by the prestigious Scientific American magazine (The Scientific American 50).
“I am looking forward to being an active board member at Phytomedics, as it makes its transition as a ‘full player’ in the healthcare oriented pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical world, with technology that can reduce discovery and development costs while accelerating time to market for pharmaceuticals,” said G. Steven Burrill.
A core component of Phytomedics initiatives are botanical drugs, as recently defined by the U.S. FDA (http://www.fda.gov/cder/Offices/ODE_V_BRT/botanicalDrug.htm). Phytomedics sees this as a lucrative pharmaceutical segment that allows for the development of heterogeneous plant derived products as ethical drugs in the U.S., and do it for reduced costs and time frames in comparison to new chemical entities (NCEs) or biologics, while retaining strong drug market exclusivity and appealing to expanding consumer desires for natural healthcare alternatives.
About Phytomedics Inc.
Phytomedics Inc. (http://www.phytomedics.com) uses a broad and innovative proprietary technology platform to discover, develop, manufacture, and commercialize novel, multi-component and multi-functional botanical therapeutics. Through state-of-the-art, proprietary approaches, Phytomedics’ botanical therapeutics program reconnects plants and human health at a new level of technological sophistication. The Company has produced a pipeline of lead compounds, several of which are in clinical development, some as far as Phase IIb. Founded by Professor Ilya Raskin, Ph.D., Phytomedics Inc. conducts most of its R&D at the Biotech Center of Rutgers University.
Phytomedics Inc.
CONTACT: Ira S. Pastor, Executive VP of Phytomedics Inc., +1-267-971-7725,pastor@phytomedics.com
