Chief Technology Officer

Winston Black Appointed As SWK Holdings New Chairman of the Board

SWK HoldingsSWK Holdings Corporation, a Texas-based finance company specializing in the healthcare sector recently revealed in an announcement that its board of directors now has a new Chairman.

As per a statement released by the firm, it has appointed Mr. Winston Black – Chief Executive Officer of the group to the role of Chairman of its board, while Mike Weinberg, former chairman of the board, will continue to remain as one of the board members post stepping from his role.

Mr. Black has been a part of the firm for seven and a half years now having joined the firm back in May of 2012 in the role of Managing Director. He was promoted to the role of Chief Executive Officer in January of 2016 for nearly four and a half years since joining the firm making this his second promotion since joining the firm. His role as Chairman of the board is an addition to his existing role of duties and Mr. Black will continue to remain based out of the firm’s headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

Since its launch in 2012, SWK has gained a reputation for unique financing structures to support growth opportunities for small life science companies and has successfully executed this business model with 36 partners, deployed $528 million of capital and created a portfolio of royalties and structured credit backed by royalties that totals approximately $170 million across 23 partners.

 Commenting on his new role as Chairman of the board, Mr. Black said, “On behalf of the Board, I want to express my appreciation to Mike for his service to SWK.  Mike has been a strong steward of the Company as Chairman of the Board, overseeing the implementation of SWK’s life science finance business model and providing guidance for our growth strategies.  I am indeed grateful for all he has contributed to SWK, and personally, for his mentorship”.

He also added, “I am honored to have been elected as SWK’s Chairman and am eager to work with Mike and the other Board members to execute a growth strategy that, I believe, has the potential to transform SWK and generate substantial value for the Company and our shareholders.  I look forward to building upon our core life science franchise by both continuing to execute compelling transactions with attractive risk-adjusted returns in the life science sector, and catalyzing Enteris to realize the value of its Peptelligence® platform, primarily by building our own wholly-owned portfolio of milestone and royalty-bearing license agreements”. 

Entries BioPharma Inc. is a biotechnology company acquired by SWK Holdings Corp back in August earlier this year. Entries is known for developing innovative oral formulations of hard-to-dose peptide- and small molecule-based therapies built around its proprietary drug delivery technology, Peptelligence.

Presently, many drugs in these categories can only be administered via intravenous injection, which can limit market opportunities for the drug maker and reduce patient compliance.  Enteris licenses its Peptelligence technology to pharmaceutical partners to improve the solubility of hard-to-dose therapeutics.

The most recent licensing partnership, with Cara Therapeutics, announced on August 21, 2019, will allow Cara to continue developing an oral formulation of a first-in-class KOR agonist, Korsuva™. Oral Korsuva is now the subject of three separate Phase 2 clinical trials for pruritus in patients with hepatic impairment due to primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), stage III-V chronic kidney disease (CKD), and atopic dermatitis (AD).

As a wholly-owned subsidiary of SWK, Enteris will continue to focus on the advancement of the external partnerships built around Peptelligence, as well as its internal 505(b)(2) drug development pipeline, both of which have the potential to deliver lucrative near and longer-term licensing opportunities.

Source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/swk-holdings-elects-ceo-winston-black-as-new-chairman-of-the-board-300962760.html