Draw­ing Shire par­al­lel, Flem­ming Ørn­skov mulls IPO for Gal­der­ma; Rei­s­tone shows re­sults from eczema study with JAK1 block­er

Two years ago, Flem­ming Ørn­skov took up a new chal­lenge as CEO of Gal­der­ma with the ex­pec­ta­tion he would work the mag­ic like he did with Shire — cul­mi­nat­ing in the rare dis­ease biotech’s $62 bil­lion sale to Take­da — with the pure-play der­ma­tol­ogy out­fit fresh­ly spun out of Nestlé.

Now that the ship is steady, he’s seem­ing­ly set­ting his sights on an IPO.

In an in­ter­view with Bloomberg, Ørn­skov said he’s ac­cel­er­at­ing re­search spend­ing while re­cruit­ing more der­ma­tol­o­gists and med­ical spe­cial­ists to the com­pa­ny. The strat­e­gy, he added, is sim­i­lar to Shire’s in the sense that he would dou­ble down on the sci­ence and shift to cut­ting-edge, high-risk prod­ucts that can com­mand high prices — even as Gal­der­ma con­tin­ues to bring in rev­enue through its con­sumer aes­thet­ic and skin care prod­ucts such as Cetaphil mois­tur­iz­ers.

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