At Reliant, Mario Tries for Alza II
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Reliant Pharmaceuticals was created as an alternative to Big Pharma in marketing primary care products. But in-licensing market-ready products is expensive and primary-care sales forces expensive to maintain. With new CEO Ernie Mario, the company has now raised a huge amount of new money and will accelerate its efforts to in-license development stage products--a higher risk strategy, but the only way to ultimately create the margins necessary for sustainability.