Candida Auris Cure Approved? Dr. Taglietti of Scynexis Details the Development of this New Wonder Drug

April 15, 2019

Marco Taglietti, M.D., is President and Chief Executive Officer of SCYNEXIS, Inc. Dr. Taglietti joined SCYNEXIS as a member of the board in November 2014 and has been the Chief Executive Officer since April 2015 and the President since September 2015.

Prior to SCYNEXIS, he served as Executive Vice President, Research and Development and Chief Medical Officer of Forest Laboratories, Inc. and as President of the Forest Research Institute until its acquisition by Actavis in 2014. Prior to joining Forest Laboratories in 2007, Dr. Taglietti held the position of Senior Vice President, Head of Global Research and Development at Stiefel Laboratories, Inc., a GSK company, for three years.

He joined Stiefel Laboratories after 12 years at Schering-Plough Corporation, where he last held the position of Vice President, Worldwide Clinical Research for Anti-Infectives, Oncology, CNS, Endocrinology and Dermatology. Dr. Taglietti began his pharmaceutical career at Marion Merrell Dow Research Institute.

Over the course of his career, he has brought to market 35 different products in the U.S. and internationally. Dr. Taglietti currently serves on the board of directors of BioNJ, Inc. and Delcath (NASDAQ:DCTH). He received his medical degree and board certifications from the University of Pavia in Italy.

In this exclusive 3,951 word interview, found only in the Wall Street Transcript, Dr. Taglietti details his company’s development of an important new treatment for a serious illness:

“We believe that our product will play an important role as it is very versatile and flexible. It is being developed in severe hospital infections. Recently, just a few weeks ago, we actually issued a press release in which we discussed very positive data in patients who had fungal infections that were refractory and resistant to currently available treatments.

These patients have no or limited options, and we showed good activity in these patients. One area of development for us is hospital infections with the highly immune-compromised patients, but there is also another development that we are having in parallel in what we call our outpatients’ treatments.”

Candida auris is one of the targets for this new drug:

“Not only the CDC — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — but all public health authorities across the world are very concerned about Candida auris. Let me tell you why they’re so concerned about it. Number one, the pathogen Candida auris is a multidrug-resistant pathogen, so it tends to be naturally resistant to azoles and many other antifungals that are currently available. Second, the Candida species is very aggressive, so mortality can be as high as 60%.”

The CEO, Marco Taglietti, M.D. explains the potential for investors:

“We have a great product and a great team with a track record of developing successful products that is as good as any I have seen in my 25-plus-year career that has involved more than 30 different products in different therapeutic areas.

So you may ask, why is our stock price so undervalued? The reason is that antifungals are not well-understood. Antibacterials typically do not do very well commercially. But the antifungals space is not a crowded market. We are addressing an area where there are very few options in the hospital, specifically, and where there is high mortality. For these indications, you usually have long treatment durations.

We believe our product, on a very conservative basis, will make total sales in excess of $500 million in the U.S. We believe it may even reach $1 billion sales in the U.S.”

Get the full detail on this development for Scynexis by reading the entire 3,951 word interview, only in the Wall Street Transcript.