If you?e ever taken a drug for an illness, chances are that Gena Reed and her Irvine-based company, Paragon Biomedical Inc., had a hand in making sure it was safe and effective.
Reed, Paragon? founder and chief executive, was one of five executives and entrepreneurs honored at the Business Journal? 15th annual Women in Business awards luncheon held May 21 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine.
Paragon, which runs clinical trials for drug makers, medical device makers and biotechnology companies, is expected to generate $44 million in sales this year.
The company specializes in managing second- and third-phase clinical trials on human subjects.
Paragon finds doctors, makes sure they are set up to do the research, finds appropriate patients and gets them started on the drug being studied, Reed said.
After trials get under way, Paragon monitors their progress at each site.
?e make sure that every single doctor in that particular study does it exactly in the same manner,?Reed said.
Paragon works with large and midsized drug and device makers. Confidentiality agreements prevent Paragon from giving specific names.
Paragon competes with several bigger contract research companies such as Quintiles Trans-national Corp. of North Carolina and New Jersey-based Covance Inc., which had a recent market value of $2.6 billion.
? lot of our competitors are absolute goliaths?hey?e half-billion-dollar companies, so they can do everything for everyone, all over the world,?Reed said.
To compete, Paragon concentrates on delivering quality work and it specializes in cardiovascular and immunology drugs, as well as those for infectious diseases.
Recently, Reed has watched drug companies pull back spending as they attempt to feel out the Obama administration? healthcare agenda.
Paragon has 325 employees, 100 of whom work in OC. Besides Irvine, the company also has offices in Britain, Poland and India.
Reed? Background
Reed and her husband, Nick, founded Paragon in 1989.
Before starting Paragon, she worked for Marion Merrell Dow, a large drug maker that now is part of France? Sanofi-Aventis.
She caught the entrepreneur bug when she and four others at Marion Merrell Dow were given $2 million to start a community-based health marketing company whose projects included building stop-smoking campaigns.
? was an ?ntrapreneur?for a while,?she said.
Reed was born in Kentucky, raised in Canada and went to the University of Cincinnati.
In her spare time, she is heavily involved with Girls Inc., a nonprofit organization that advocates for girls. She? been a trustee of the organization? local operations since 2005.
