Management Change To Breathe New Life Into GTC
PHOTO/BRANDON BUTLER
William Heiden hopes to move the focus at GTC Biotherapeutics in Framingham from drug discovery to commercialization.
William Heiden, the newly anointed president and CEO of the Framingham biotech firm GTC Biotherapeutics, admits that the last couple of years for the company have been a struggle.
The company lost $27.9 million last year and another $7.7 million in the first quarter of 2010.
But Heiden is looking to turn all of that around. He has a plan to put the company, which uses genetically enhanced goats to produce pharmaceutical drugs, on a growth trajectory within the next 12 to 18 months.
The first step in that process began in mid-June when the GTC board of directors named Heiden the company's new president and CEO. He most recently served as president and CEO of Elixir Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Cambridge.
Also during the shakeup, the GTC board fired its top two executives along with 50 other employees. At the same time, the company received $7 million in debt financing from its majority shareholder, the French biotech company LFB Biotechnologies.
"We're not just going to be doing the same things with less people," Heiden said. "That's not what this restructuring is about. It's about doing something different."
Focus Shift
Heiden's goal is to transition GTC from a drug-development company into a drug-selling company.
The company already has one drug, called ATryn, on the market that is approved for sales in the United States and Europe.
The drug, which is purified from the milk of genetically enhanced goats, is used to treat patients who have a protein deficiency in their blood that prevents clotting.
GTC is working with Lundbeck Inc., a Danish company with U.S. offices in Chicago, to market the drug to physicians.
"The scale and quality of this technology is just incredible, and we need to prove that," he said.
A second goal is to continue to develop Factor VIIA, a drug developed with LFP to treat the blood disorder hemophilia. Heiden said he expects that drug to begin clinical testing in humans before the end of the year. Then, Heiden hopes to work with LFB on developing additional drugs that can be made using the transgenic process.
Heiden is hoping a renewed focus on cost-cutting measures and developing profitable drugs will allow the company to grow in the coming years.
According to an SEC filing, the company will net $8 and $9 million in annual savings from the reduction in staff. The company will still have about 60 employees at its Framingham headquarters and a farm in Charlton where the goats are housed and the drugs are made.
Heiden also said the executive shakeup is a "solidification" of the company's relationship with LFB, which has already thrown millions of dollars into the company. Heiden is a member of the LFB board of directors and joined the GTC board last year. In the past year LFB has provided GTC with more than $14 million in financing, which is on top of a $25 million stock purchase LFB made in 2006.
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