Firestone looking for improvement at AustCancer

AustCancer (ASX:ACU) shares have clawed back some of their recent losses since the company announced last Wednesday it has appointed US biotech executive Len Firestone as CEO. And although Firestone's recent experience would seem to make him something of a merger-specialist, he insists that he was not recruited to catalyse a merger.

"The experience I have is unrelated," he said today.

Following a career as an academic physician in critical care and anaesthesiology, Firestone headed up a medical practice management company in Pennsylvania, and then steered two New-York-based biotechs, Innovative Drug Delivery Systems and Manhattan Pharmaceuticals, through reverse-takeover public listings.

"Both companies merged in order to get their listings," he said. "And [in both cases] I was the CEO that stepped aside in the process of the merger in order to effect it."

Although it has been a few short weeks since he was first approached to take up the role of CEO at AustCancer - Firestone is ready to make changes, including moving the company's centre of gravity to America. "I have spent my life making life and death decisions," he said.

The company's Revisys nutraceuticals business is being "reviewed" after disappointing half-year sales. "The supplements have not provided the cash revenue that we had expected this year," said Firestone. "We will decide what to do to improve that corner of the business. It is potentially an outstanding business."

And the adjuvant technology AustCancer acquired through its takeover of US biopharma Galenica is ripe for a licensing deal, according to Firestone. "Recently in America there have been some very lucrative licensing deals in the adjuvant area," he said.

Corixa Corporation last year licensed its RC-529 adjuvant technology to Aventis for undisclosed up-front license fees and success-based milestone and royalty payments.

Firestone is also disappointed by the lacklustre response to AustCancer's announcement in early February that the results of its experimental cancer treatment, RP101, prolonged the lives of patients with pancreatic cancer in a really dramatic way. "Ten out of 13 lasted a year or more," he said. "Nobody has a drug that is in this stage of development for metastatic pancreatic cancer."