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One player in Maine’s pet health cluster is a puppy nipping at the haunches of a mastiff.
Putney Inc. of Portland is developing generic drugs for pets, which means the 12-employee firm is taking on the pet-specific arms of some of the pharmaceutical industry’s giants. CEO Jean Hoffman said that while some companies have gone after the cattle, pork and poultry markets with generic drugs, Putney stands out in that it is coming out of a background in human pharma to target companion animals.
“The veterinarians will benefit from generics because they will be able to increase their margins while offering savings to pet owners, and they will be able to treat more pets because more people will be able to afford treatment for their pets,” said Hoffman. But, she notes, taking on big pharma “isn’t for the faint of heart.” Putney and any others who enter the pet generic market face challenges in terms of technology — developing the drugs — as well as dealing with legal challenges from patent holders, getting U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals and establishing sales and marketing teams.
“It takes a certain skill set, and we have that skill set from working on the human side of pharmaceuticals. We’re experienced in fighting those battles,” Hoffman said.
She said that while almost every human drug coming off patent has a generic equivalent, 94 percent of the FDA approved drugs for pets lack a generic.
Hoffman previously ran an information services company in the pharmaceutical sector, Newport Strategies. She noted that even FDA approval can be more difficult in the veterinary sector than on human drugs because of factors such as how a drug works for different breeds of cats.
Putney was launched in 2006, and, until last year, had been marketing human drugs available to veterinarians. Putney introduced its first generic drug approved for pets by the FDA, a generic version of caprofen, whose branded version, Rimadyl, is owned by Pfizer Inc. Hoffman said that caprofen has a market potential of $100 million a year in the U.S. Hoffman said that Putney has 20 potential generic pet-drug targets in the pipeline, and that it expects to reach 20 employees by the end of this year, building out its sales and marketing team as FDA approvals come in.
In November, Putney landed $6.7 million in a Series B round led by Chemwerth Inc. president and CEO Peter Werth and a Pritzker family trust.
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