It is always great to brag and cheer about one of our portfolio companies. Working with portfolio companies to help them succeed is one of a VC's key jobs, and helping build an executive team is an area where a VC can help a lot. We are pleased to announce that AssureRx Health has just added some super people to its team. The three executives are: Dr. C. Anthony Altar, PhD, chief science officer; Alexander Burgess, VP of Marketing, and Karen Schellin VP of Finance. All were critically needed due to the rapid increase in business for the AssureRx product. The new team members will substantially bolster the company's capabilities in pharmacogenomics, drug discovery and development, pharmacogenetic product development, commercialization, marketing, sales and financing. The company's goal is to build the leading medical informatics company providing pharmacogenetic and other treatment decision support products to help physicians individualize treatment for neuropsychiatric and other disorders.
AssureRx has been growing rapidly. Using genomics technology originally licensed from two preeminent research hospitals – the Mayo Clinic and Cincinnati Children's Hospital – the company has developed a product line that is getting tremendous adoption in the broad medical community. The genomics test the company developed helps physicians individualize drug recommendations for patients. This is the essence of personalized medicine – combining genetic information with computational algorithms to determine disease predisposition, prognosis, and to predict recurrence. Clinicians have long prescribed drugs based on their best judgment and laboratory test results, but individual patients have highly variable responses to their medications. So, invariably, a certain percentage of patients fail to benefit from the prescribed drug and some actually experience adverse reactions. The reason is the genetic differences among patients. The AssureRx test replaces a trial-and-error approach in the prescription of these medications with a test that analyzes multiple, clinically important genetic variants that affect both the metabolism and mechanism of action of critical drugs. The test reveals the genetic individuality of each patient, enabling the personalized prescription of the best medication. It is turning out that genomic-based methods for drug selection ensure better treatment outcomes and fewer adverse drug reactions.
We at Claremont Creek Ventures are proud to be associated with AssureRx, and we think that this company will be one of the big success stories in the growing field of pharmacogenetic medicine.