About: Quest For A Cure

In his youth, Dr. R. Loch Macdonald held a deep fascination with the human brain and showed a keen interest in discovering how small electronics functioned. The family’s radio was his first “patient.” Since his early days of “operating” on household appliances and listening to his psychologist father talk about the brain, Dr. Macdonald has become an internationally recognized neurosurgeon and researcher.

He knows that every eight minutes someone suffers a ruptured brain aneurysm, also called subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), and every 16 seconds someone is rushed to the emergency room in the US with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). These are the primary results, but Dr. Macdonald specializes in treating patients at risk of developing a secondary condition which causes the narrowing of arteries and starves the brain of oxygen causing it to die. This condition, called vasospasm, occurs when blood leaks into the brain causing an SAH, a type of stroke. Vasospasm happens just days or weeks after an initial stroke or TBI. Surprisingly, it occurs while the patient is hospitalized under emergency medical care. The results are devastating–ranging from life-altering disability to patient death.

Dr. Macdonald remembers one such patient: a vibrant, beautiful young actress in her thirties with two children and a loving husband. She had suffered a debilitating stroke and subsequently died of vasospasm. It was an unfortunate, yet typical case: a healthy young person cut down in the prime of life without any warning signs, and a medical team unable to prevent the secondary condition that caused her death. Dr. Macdonald never forgot that patient, or the thousands of others he would treat, and thus began his 20-year Quest For A Cure.

But he could not do it alone. After Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana, Dr. Macdonald, in January 2005, had a fortuitous meeting with Brian Leuthner, a longtime pharmaceutical sales and marketing executive. Both were attending the International Stroke Association meeting in storm-damaged New Orleans when they engaged in an informal conversation about stroke and how vasospasm might be treated. New Orleans was the rising phoenix, and so too it seemed, was Dr. Macdonald’s Quest For A Cure.

Leuthner joined the Quest, followed by Carl J. Soranno, Esq., a partner and practicing attorney with one of the Northeast’s leading law firms. Prior to becoming an attorney, Soranno spent 11 years in the securities business working to bring to market small emerging companies. Soranno’s passion for the law and business is surpassed only by his passion for the Quest. For him, it is a deeply personal mission because of his family’s history of stroke–his mother died of a stroke, a brother had a stroke and another was recently diagnosed with an unruptured brain aneurysm.

The challenge for the three men–all experts in their respective fields–was to address the unmet medical need while proving that treatment would be commercially viable. After evaluating how many patients would be afflicted, how much current treatments cost, and the effectiveness / ineffectiveness of current treatments, a viable business model was developed. Leuthner’s pharmaceutical business acumen, Soranno’s passion for law and business along with his personal interest and Macdonald’s medical expertise were exactly what the doctor ordered–and needed: the analysis was compelling.

The Team is prepared to use their skills and knowledge to be able to help some of the 750,000 stroke patients and 1.5 million TBI patients annually in the US, and many more worldwide, Dr. Macdonald says EDGE THERAPEUTICS can “do it, drive it, and get it done.” He believes NimoGel can deliver the right product to the right site in the right amount for the right amount of time. Today, the Quest For A Cure is on track to pursue research funding, conduct clinical trials, seek FDA approval and launch the product.

Recent articles published by R. Loch Macdonald, MD, PhD