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Trevena, Inc.

 

2010 Stevie Award Winner

Company: Trevena, Inc., King of Prussia, PA U.S.A.
Entry Submitted By: Pure Communications, Inc.
Company Description: Trevena, Inc. is a leader in the discovery and development of GPCR biased ligand drugs. Trevena combines a powerful and efficient drug discovery platform with extensive development experience to yield a rich linked portfolio of novel medicines.
Nomination Category: Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Executive – Non-Services Businesses – up to 100 Employees

Nomination Title: Maxine Gowen, Ph.D., Founding President and CEO

Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated executive during the eligibility period (up to 500 words):

Maxine Gowen, Ph.D., is an accomplished and experienced pharmaceutical
executive with 17 years of leadership experience in innovative drug discovery and
development in both large and small companies, biotech venture capital investing
and business start-up. Her career is characterized by significant success as both a
scientist and as a businesswoman. Since October 2007, Dr. Gowen has served as
the founding president and CEO of Trevena, Inc. and during the last year, she has
overseen progression of the company’s drug pipeline, established strategic
partnerships to boost productivity, and secured additional funding.
Additionally, Dr.
Gowen serves on the board of BIO (the biotechnology industry association), is an
R&D advisor to GlaxoSmithKline plc and board member for the biopharmaceutical
company Human Genome Sciences.

Through July 2010, Dr. Gowen has secured for Trevena $60 million in Series A and
Series B venture capital financing. This capital has come from leading healthcare
investors, including Polaris Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Alta
Partners, HealthCare Ventures and the Yasuda Enterprise Development Company.
Under her leadership, Trevena has grown into a thriving young company employing
30 people in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

In November 2009, Dr. Gowen led a team that secured a $7.65 million Grand
Opportunity Grant from the office of the director of the National Institutes of
Health. The award is being used to fund Trevena’s work to identify and characterize
functionally selective biased ligands for a set of GPCR drug targets. The funds,
which were provided to the NIH as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery
Act of 2009, also enable the company to make unique tool molecules available to
research collaborators and academic laboratories, which will expand knowledge of
key signaling pathways in biological processes and accelerate drug discovery.
Trevena’s ‘biased ligand’ approach to drug discovery is unique, and provides a way
to create a new generation of medicines with enhanced properties.

In April 2010, Dr. Gowen’s company initiated a phase 1 clinical trial of TRV120027,
the first biased ligand to be discovered and tested in humans. The drug candidate
is a titratable intravenous agent designed for the treatment of acute
decompensated heart failure, a condition which causes 1.5 million hospitalizations
each year in the US at a cost of over $20 billion. TRV120027 demonstrated
attributes in preclinical studies which suggest a potential to reduce the burden of
this uncontrolled epidemic.

Dr. Gowen’s leadership at Trevena has also driven and created collaborative
partnerships with Ligand Pharmaceuticals and Scynexis, Inc., two American
research service providers. The partnership with Ligand is a target screening
collaboration to explore biased ligand hypotheses derived from Trevena’s ABLE™
platform. The Scynexis partnership provides medicinal chemistry services to
support and accelerate Trevena’s ongoing research activities directed at the
discovery of biased GPCR biased ligands.

As a Wharton School of Business graduate, Dr Gowen is an active supporter of the
Entrepreneurship Program at the university. She acts as a career mentor for the
current MBA class, and was a panel judge in the 2010 business plan competition
at the school.

List the URLs (web addresses) of any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that you would like the judges to see that support your entry. IMPORTANT: List each URL on a separate line, begin each URL with http://, and enclose each URL in square brackets. For example, [http://www.yourcompany.com/pressrelease.html]:

Trevena Awarded $7.65 Million NIH Grant (Press Release, Nov. 3, 2009)
http://www.trevenainc.com/news-details.php?id=4

Trevena Initiates Clinical Development of TRV120027, a First-in-Class Biased
Ligand (Press Release, April 14, 2010)
http://www.trevenainc.com/news-details.php?id=15

SCYNEXIS and Trevena Announce Strategic Collaboration to Enhance Discovery of
Biased GPCR Ligands (Press Release, May 19, 2010)
http://www.trevenainc.com/news-details.php?id=16

Emerging Company Profile “Trevena: Biased about pathways”, BioCentury (News
article, June 21, 2010)
http://biocentury.com/BCApp/Archives/Article.aspx?id=bioca_2010_2q10_companyprofile_062110a13.htm_companyprofile&url=bca
/2010/2Q10/CompanyProfile/062110A13.htm&type=bcA&dt=2010/07/06

Provide a brief biography of the nominated executive (up to 100 words):

Prior to founding Trevena and serving as President and CEO, Dr. Gowen held a
variety of leadership roles at GlaxoSmithKline. She established and led the Center
of Excellence for External Drug Discovery, an innovative approach to externalizing
drug discovery in big pharma. She served as Managing Partner at SR One, the
venture capital subsidiary of GSK and, until 2002, was Vice President, Drug
Discovery, Musculoskeletal Diseases. She received a B.Sc. in biochemistry from
the University of Bristol, and a Ph.D. in cell biology from the University of
Sheffield.
She received an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.