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The Right Fit: Anthony Giovinazzo steps in as the CEO and president of Cannasat

With more than 31 years of international merchant banking and venture capital experience-including having served as the president of MDS Capital Corp.’s neuroscience partner’s fund, Anthony Giovinazzo is looking forward to putting his extensive experience to use as the new president and CEO of Cannasat Therapeutics Inc.

Stepping into the role in November, Giovinazzo inherited a pipeline rich in potential, including a proprietary formulation technology for cannabis drug candidates, and the company’s lead product Relivar, a buccal tablet for symptomatic management of neuropathic pain.

With a reputation for being an out-of-the-box thinker as well as a polished executive, Giovinazzo was chosen by David Hill as the ideal successor to run the company. He brings with him extensive experience in licensing drug candidates, mergers and acquisitions, the management of clinical development and the ability to build small execution focused teams.

“I really credit the former CEO Mr. David Hill and his board for having brought me in,” says Giovinazzo. “They wanted to create a stronger management team and supplement the existing team they had with people that had large pharma in-licensing, merger/ acquisition, and international capital raising expertise. He (Hill) really decided that it would make more sense to bring a race horse in to take the company forward and create and realize value as quickly as possible, and so here I am.”

The fact that Giovinazzo has a track record for delivering financial results as well as a good relationship with investors was not lost on the decision makers who have put him in charge.

“If you go to the U.S. and you talk to institutional venture investors, they’d tell you they would always prefer to have a management team and a CEO that have had several experiences under their belts, and not just positive experiences either because the negatives are the things that create scars on your back and remind you of where not to go or where to go in the process of building value.”

Successes on Giovinazzo’s resume include selling Cita NeuroPharmaceuticals Ltd. to Vernalis Plc. in what was one of the largest merger and acquisition deals of 2005. He was also able to raise US$36 million for Cervelo Pharmaceuticals Inc. in 2007. Moreover, of his 31 years of international biopharmaceutical experience in drug development, 16 years have been spent in the CNS field. Giovinazzo was the logical choice to take the helm of this budding CNS company. Again it all comes down to his proven ability to manage. Already he has a plan in place to take the company forward.

“We have a proprietary technology, and a candidate (Relivar) with very interesting potential to treat neuropathic pain associated with multiple sclerosis and cancer, as well as for nausea/vomiting and appetite stimulation,” says Giovinazzo.
The strength of this product and its validity is one of the major reasons Giovinazzo chose to sign on with the company. The active ingredient for Relivar, dronabinol (or THC), has been clinically studied for neuropathic pain in numerous clinical trials, many of which have been published in reputable peer reviewed journals.

On top of this product, the rest of the pipeline is also strong. As such expanding the company’s foothold in a broader CNS area is equally important to Giovinazzo’s future plans for the company.

“Growing the company’s portfolio of drug candidates through in-licensing and acquisitions, and to advance projects to Phase 2 proof-of-concept clinical studies is only part of the strategy. Once the drug candidates are sufficiently de-risked, I intend to out-license the programs to the appropriate pharma marketing partners for a combination of upfront, milestone, and royalty payments,” he says.

His plan to build the company includes assembling a portfolio of two to three additional drug candidates through in-licensing.

“Doing so will create more substance in the company. One never knows in this business which project might stumble or slow down, or have to be shut down and so being a one trick pony is not the best choice. Essentially by creating a portfolio of not one core asset, but three clinical development assets, you are left with three different trajectories to commercial valuation.” he explains

The best part is he’s done it all before. For starters, he built Cita NeuroPharmaceuticals Ltd. over a period of three years, from a single early stage drug candidate, to an independent CNS company with three mid-to-late stage drug candidates.

“Cita was a great example of how you build a company in Canada by in licensing drug candidates from elsewhere. With Cita, we in-licensed candidates from a European mid tier pharma that had over a billion dollars in sales yearly. By doing good work in terms of having a team of 10-12 people that understand this area from a clinical and regulatory point of view, we in fact created a very valuable portfolio. Lucky for us we also had an investment bank approach us while we were on the road show looking to buy us out. It’s a very good example of a company where you can build a portfolio, build a team, but eventually you have to think about the exit strategy for your stakeholders and it was a very important lesson that I learned.”

It’s important to note that others had a hand in getting Cita to a point where it was attractive enough for buyers. In fact, Giovinazzo brought in an executive team with experience to balance the business initiatives with the market initiatives. Giovinazzo believes that Cannasat will benefit like Cita did with a more experienced management team supplementing the current management team. With this in mind, he plans to bring in several individuals that he has worked with previously with other CNS ventures, including some top consultants with experience in both the regulatory and toxicology side.

“With the team we have, we’re currently trying to bring a Parkinson’s asset on board as well as a broader pain asset either by way of in-licensing or by way of a merger and acquisition of an existing private or public biotech company,” he says.

Yet even with a valuable team and product portfolio in place, there is still always the bigger question of where the money is going to come from.

“What we really need to do to build value quickly is to do several projects at the same time, running several studies as tightly as you can from a timing point of view and moving forward to an inflection point of some substance. That requires raising money either from the very sophisticated venture capital community internationally or the institutional investor community internationally. You need to raise eight to ten million dollars at a time, if not more,” states Giovinazzo.

This is an approach the company was not following prior to Giovinazzo’s appointment as president and CEO.

“The company did extremely well on a limited basis raising almost $10 million over five years. But the truth is, that’s just not enough to do things quickly” explains Giovinazzo.

The first step he says is bringing in capital from multiple sources.

“Obviously from my experience, what I know is you can’t raise all the capital we want in Canada, but that should not stop us. And in fact because of my past experience in raising capital internationally, I’ll look at dividing up what I need by raising some of it here and some of it abroad, like the U.S. and the Far East which I think is achievable. With the current economic and capital markets environment, it’s quite likely that it will not be possible to raise all of the new capital I need in the short run from institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies and mutual funds. But there’s a very good probability of having a hybrid model. Where you raise some of the money from large venture capitalists who do invest in public companies, what’s called a private placement in a company, alongside institutional investors so that you’re not depleting one source of capital completely, and leaving everyone hungry for future opportunity as well.”

He’s also not shy about turning to big pharmaceutical companies on the prowl for innovative products. As such, the strategy for Cannasat is to become a clinical development company, but to be of the type that doesn’t expect to complete the value-chain process. Essentially he is going into it with a pre-conceived notion that there is going to be an exit strategy in the end


“We will stop at a clinical proof of concept, Phase 2A or Phase 2B in order to have robust data, to attract a first tier or second tier pharmaceutical industry. In the CNS field or diseases of the brain, the companies may include Biovail, as well as the big players, sanofi aventis, GSK, and Pfizer. I believe one of the important risk mitigating factors that we’ve learned from the Americans is how they’ve built their biotech companies with portfolios rather than as single project company’s. It’s something we need to do more of from a commercial valuation perspective in Canada. And to able to take that and move it forward by raising sufficient capital. So my strategy going forward is to build this portfolio, to create a true clinical development company and also to raise capital,” he says.