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No. 7 – Ista Pharmaceuticals Inc.

THE NUMBERS:

Three-year growth: 112.3%

12-month sales through June: $94.2 million

12-month loss through June: $63.7 million

Recent market value: $145 million

Employees: 223, 96 in OC

Company: eye drug maker

Ista Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s drugs are catching the eye of doctors.

Ista, an Irvine-based ophthalmic drug maker that was Orange County’s top fastest-growing public company in 2007, comes in at No. 7 this year.

Ista makes a range of eye drugs, including those for treating glaucoma and easing pain after cataract surgery, and it is about to roll out a prescription eye allergy medication.

Ista posted 112.3% revenue growth for the three years ended June 30. It went from $44 million in revenue for the 12 months through June 2007 to $94 million for the same period through this June.

“We’re just now beginning to enter a huge—what I think is going to be explosive—growth phase,” Chief Executive Vince Anido said last month.

Anido said that’s because the Food and Drug Administration approved Bepreve, a prescription drug for treating itchy eyes from allergies.

Ista will introduce Bepreve in the current quarter and Anido says the drug could double the company’s sales.

Ista’s planning to grow its sales force from 103 to more than 160 to help launch Bepreve, and it will come into a market that is valued at around $600 million annually. The drug will be sold to general ophthalmologists, optometrists and allergists.

In the meantime, Ista’s sales have primarily grown because of Xibrom, a drug used to treat pain after cataract surgery. Xibrom accounts for 76% of its revenue.

Ista is working on a once-daily formulation of Xibrom and hopes to have it available in mid-2010, Anido said. That formulation will give Ista another three years of patent protection against generics, he said, although he doesn’t expect generic competition for the original Xibrom until 2011.

The company also has seen gains from Istalol, a treatment for glaucoma, which is a leading cause of blindness, and Vitrase, which acts as a spreading agent for other drugs.

Ista’s taken off on Wall Street. As of last week, its shares are up more than 500% from the beginning of the year with a market value of $145 million. The stock’s come back from a 90% drop in 2008 and a 30% drop in 2007 after some clinical trial and regulatory setbacks.

Analyst Frank Pinkerton of Atlanta investment bank SunTrust Robinson Humphrey is bullish on Ista, noting that the company’s “done a good job of positioning its sales force before physicians and aggressively promoting its products” even though it goes up against larger competitors such as Allergan Inc. of Irvine and Fort Worth, Texas-based Alcon Inc., which has 785 workers in Irvine.

Ista still is working toward profitability. The company posted a loss of $63.7 million for the 12 months ended June 30.

Analyst Pinkerton has projected that Ista could turn a profit in the current quarter, as well as a $5.6 million profit on sales of $132 million in 2010, largely on Bepreve’s launch.

Ista was kept afloat last year by funding of up to $65 million from investors Deerfield Capital Management LLC, the Sport Group and Sanderling Ventures, which Anido has said “put a huge safety net” under the company.

The drug maker’s pipeline also includes T-Pred, a steroid that is in clinical trials, the development of Bepreve for the nasal allergy market and a dry eye drug.

Ista, which was founded as Advanced Corneal Systems in 1992 and changed its name to Ista nine years ago, has 223 workers, 96 of whom are in OC.

The company had been at or near the top of the Business Journal’s fastest-growing public companies list for several years. Back in 2006, it dethroned Newport Beach-based Acacia Research Corp., a company that buys patents and collects licensing fees.

Acacia Research is No. 29 on this year’s list.

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