Leith Healthcare's Managing Director, Richard Baderin, shares his thoughts on recent developments following the management buyout.

13th June 2024

We’re now an independent company, owned and operated by our founders. We’re really grateful to the team at CHASE for their support in establishing Leith Healthcare, it was the right time to take this step and we completed a management buyout from CHASE in May. When we began thinking about what is now Leith Healthcare, back in 2021, our initial idea was to partner with pharmaceutical companies that did not have a UK commercial presence, to help them launch innovative brands that needed a marketing-led approach. That remains our focus today, however we’re increasingly looking for opportunities to in-license and develop new products while remaining true to our ethos of flexible, bespoke commercial solutions that add value to all parties, and deliver important medicines to patients.

It’s been a transformational first year. We’ve secured partnerships to launch two brands in the UK in addition to the two we had under contract at inception. One launch is due in October and two more in the next 12-18 months, so it’s going to be a very exciting and busy period. We’ve been incredibly active in business development and have a couple of opportunities in advanced discussions on innovative brands that would add value to UK patients. The last year has demonstrated the need for a company with a marketing-led approach to UK commercialisation and made us even more confident about the potential of Leith Healthcare.

We’re working on and looking for innovative brands based on known chemical entities. These are brands that bring important patient benefits. We’ve got brands in our pipeline that will be the first approvals of topical formulations for new indications, and are looking at a range of innovative brands in several therapy areas where there exists an unmet patient need. These brands tend to have peak year gross sales potential in the UK of up to £10m. They require a specialist marketing-led approach as they are first in market products that healthcare professionals need to understand and engage with to support their appropriate use.

As mentioned, we’ve got a launch coming up in October so lots of preparation is going on for that right now. Our next two brands have both reached important regulatory milestones in the last few weeks, so we’re stepping up launch preparations for those products. We’ll be expanding the team soon to ensure we can continue to bring the quality and focus to these brands that we pride ourselves on, and we’ll be attending UK and European conferences to continue to meet potential partners and look for the next products for the portfolio. Overall, we’re extremely excited by where we’ve reached in a short timeframe and are looking forward to the next phase of the company’s growth as our first brands become available in the UK.