Sanofi announces FDA approval of Sklice for treating head lice

I’m not big on tooting my own horn. But I can’t pass up the opportunity to publicize something that has been this important a part of my professional life coming to fruition.

This morning, Sanofi announced that the FDA has approved Sklice® (ivermectin) lotion, 0.5% for the topical treatment of head lice, in patients 6 months of age and older. The product will be commercialized by Sanofi Pasteur U.S., the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis Group. Last October, Sanofi-Pasteur acquired Topaz Pharmaceuticals, Inc., my former employer and the company that conducted Sklice’s R&D program, including all of its clinical trials.

I had the great privilege of working on this project for nearly two years. In addition to getting to work on a product that provides a novel method of treating a public health condition affecting millions of U.S. children each year, I got to work with terrific people who are some of the best around at what they do. I learned a lot from them and enjoyed working with them. Some of the people there spent nearly five years working to bring about this day – admittedly far less than the average time it takes to get a new drug through the entire R&D and FDA approval processes, but still a very long period of time. While larger pharmaceutical companies do this frequently, it’s quite a feat for a company that had 10 employees.

I’m very happy for them that they got to see this dream come to fruition.

You can read the entire press release here.