Concenter BioPharma: Re-Imagining Global Diabetic Treatment
Dror Chevion, CEO, Concenter BioPharma Ltd

A dynamic senior-level executive with 20+ years of experience in successfully spearheading the operations and growth of international small business, startups and major corporations across diverse industries, Dror is a well-known name in the industry. An intuitive motivator and manager of top-performing teams, borne of mutual personal and professional respect, he is a versatile communicator too.

In an interview, he speaks on array of topics. Excepts:

Conception of Concenter BioPharma

Type 2 diabetes is a global epidemy costing over $960 billion every year. In many countries, including the USA, 50% of people are either diabetic (13%) or pre-diabetic (38%), according to the recent CDC data. “Currently, more than 570 million patients have diabetes, worldwide. This is expected to reach 780 million by 2045. Despite these figures, there is no cure for this disease and, moreover, there is no efficient treatment.” Notes Dror that the existing treatments target symptoms/complications and not the core problem, which is elevated and continuously rising Insulin Resistance. “Once we demonstrated that our first drug candidate, Zygosid-50, restores insulin resistance by over 93% (pre-clinical trials), we knew we had to bring this treatment to patients ASAP and thus the idea of Concenter BioPharma was borne.” Our Core-Technology is the result of extensive successful (efficacy and safety) pre-clinical trials – in 8 animal species. IP was originally developed by Prof. Mordechai Chevion (currently a Board Member in the company) and other scientists at the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem.

Zygosid-50″ has been awarded FIRST PLACE at the 17th Annual World Congress on Insulin Resistance, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease (WCIRDC) 12/2019 in Los Angeles. Prof. Mottie Chevion, Co-Founder, received the award from Zachary Bloomgarden, MD and said “It is a great honor to receive this recognition of our achievements from the global leading researchers, physicians-clinicians and other healthcare professionals in the field!”

Healthcare – challenges galore

The pandemic demonstrated that regulators and pharma companies can work together and bring quick results to patients, when there is an urgent need, without sacrificing the safety of the patients. In addition, the entire world now understands more about the drug development processes and regulator interaction with drug developers, meaning they are aware of how things are done, what are the milestones and checkpoints and that safe and effective drugs make a real change both on a personal level and on a country and global level. “I think that regulators now know how to more efficiently work with drug developers on bringing important drugs to market in a timelier fashion. This is very good news for patients around the world.”

Concenter BioPharma’s pipeline of products

“Our drug – Zygosid-50 oral (pill) – is showing great potential for becoming a monotherapy drug for treating T2D patients and preventing T2D for pre-diabetes patients. This will clearly change the life and quality of life for millions of people around the world.” They will have a safe and effective drug that will treat the core problem of Type 2 Diabetes and therefore will stop the disease from having negative effects on the patient and stop the development of the many complications of this disease. “Also, our drug will be relatively cheap and will save patients and payors a lot of money on the drugs patients take today and on treating the complications of this disease.”

Leadership traits

“I think my greatest strengths are my ability to deeply understand how to get from where we are now to where we need to be – to plan the route and execute the plan with a certain budget and in a dictated timeframe. And to accomplish this while integrating many disciplines and taking into consideration and adapting to known and unknown factors, building a great team and maintaining a continuous and high level of motivation and desire for bringing results while acting with the necessary urgency of a startup.”

Dror urges leaders to have a clarity on the fact that everybody will fail sometimes and the important thing is to quickly recognize a failure, find the fix and act on it. Also, learn from mistakes and failures and don’t do the wrong things more than once.

Success Mantra

One mantra is that “things are not as they seem, but usually more complicated than they seem”.  Another is “we must bring this drug to patients and overcome all obstacles in our path, even when this is complicated and seems almost impossible”.