Vanda: Recycling machine

Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. sees opportunity in the therapeutics failures of others - but only those failures that also have certain characteristics of success: they have passed Phase I trials, they are bioavailable, and they have biological activity in an animal model.

The idea for the company comes out of the big pharma experience of acting CEO Jerry Karabelas of Care Capital, who worked at SmithKline Beecham, and CSO Mihael Polymeropoulos, who was head of pharmacogenetics at Novartis AG (SWX:NOVN; NVS, Basel, Switzerland). ...