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Nothing to sneeze at: local firm looks to create stir in the competitive allergy market.

Article Excerpt
verus Pharmaceuticals

Founded: November 2002.

Address: 12671 High Bluff Dirve, San Diego.

CEO: Cam Garner.

Employees: 75.

A new, relatively unknown San Diego-based pharmaceutical company could shake up an allergy market it believes needs dusting off.

Verus Pharmaceuticals Inc. launched its first product this month--the first two-dose epinephrine self-injector, called Twinject.

For the last 18 years, EpiPen, manufactured by Napa-based Dey LP, an affiliate of Merck KGaA, a German company, has dominated the market for the millions of Americans at risk for anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reactions that kill between several hundred and a couple of thousand Americans annually. To compare, asthma claims about 5,000 American lives per year, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Three-year-old Verus, the brainchild of San Diego biotech industry pioneer Cam Garner, began selling Twinject two weeks ago: Industry members say that for the first time in nearly two decades, EpiPen, the emergency medication normally prescribed by doctors for those with severe allergies to insect...