Months after a small investor group bought the assets of FirstPharma and rescued the specialty pharmaceutical compounding operation from the brink of closure, the salvaged startup now is growing at an accelerated clip.


Operating now as Riverpoint Pharmacy, the young concern has grown its monthly revenue by 50 percent in each of the last two months, compared with the previous month, says Cathy Hudek, Riverpoint Pharmacys president and director of pharmacy.


She declines to disclose the operations revenue figures, but says, Were just starting to get busy. We put money into marketing to physicians and patients, and its starting to pay off.


As a compounding pharmacy, Riverpoint mixes raw ingredients to make pharmaceutics prescribed by a physician or veterinarian that arent available at conventional pharmacies or over the counter commercially. Examples include bio-identical hormones used in hormone-replacement therapy, preservative-free vitamin supplements, and insulin for diabetic house cats, Hudek says.


The company also makes alternative forms of commercial drugs. For instance, it often makes topical versions of drugs that are available commercially in pill form for patients who have trouble swallowing pills or who suffer stomach problems after taking pills, she says.


The pharmacy has four employeesHudek, a second pharmacist, a pharmacy technician, and Chief Financial Officer Lon Covin. The company plans to hire another pharmacy technician in the coming months.


Hudek, Covin, and silent partner Dale Storr formed First Pharma Associates LLC to buy the assets of the original FirstPharma operation from Biomedex Inc., a once promising Spokane biotech company that had several lines of business.


Biomedex started FirstPharma in October 2002 and recruited Hudek at that time to be the companys director of pharmacy. Hudek says, however, that Biomedex told her in late 2003 of plans to close the compounding pharmacy, and at that time she assembled a group to buy the operations assets.


She declines to disclose the terms of that transaction, but says it was a good time to buy FirstPharma. The operation hadnt established a large client list at that point, so the new venture was paying mostly for equipment and inventory.


The new company began operating as Riverpoint Pharmacy last February.


Biomedex reportedly has shut down since then, and George Coleman, its president and co-founder, has filed personally for protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court here.


Hudek says the new owners changed the operations marketing name to Riverpoint Pharmacy to reflect its role as a specialized pharmacy, adding that the name FirstPharma sounded more like a manufacturing company to her.


Also, she says, We wanted to be completely different. We wanted to start anew.


Low volume, higher margins


Riverpoint currently is filling an average of just 20 prescriptions a day. Hudek says she hopes to be averaging 40 a day in the near future.


Compounding pharmacies generally make high margins on low volumes, in contrast to conventional pharmacies, which rely on selling high volumes of mass-produced drugs on which margins are thinner. Several retail pharmacies in the Spokane area also offer some drug compounding.


Its such a great way to practice pharmacy, Hudek says. You get to help patients solve unique medication problems.


About 80 percent of the companys work involves filling specialized prescriptions for people, and the other 20 percent involves veterinary-related prescriptions. It markets itself by letting physicians and veterinarians know of its capabilities and with some advertising campaigns targeted toward patients.


The largest percentage of Riverpoints work involves bio-identical hormone-replacement drugs.


Women use hormone-replacement therapies to combat the effects of menopause and possibly osteoporosis and heart disease. Bio-identical alternativesfor which soy or wild yams are the original sourcebecame more popular two years ago when a national study suggested that women who take synthetic hormonesmade from horse urine or manufactured componentsmight put themselves at higher risk for heart disease and breast cancer.


Also, bio-identical therapies can be individually dosed for each patient, Hudek says. Synthetic hormones often are available in two to four different dosages, but bio-identical alternatives can be made in an unlimited variety of dosages, Hudek says. Women often are more sensitive to dosage levels with hormone-replacement therapies than with other drugs, and dosage levels often need to be adjusted throughout treatment, she says.


Spokane gynecologist Dr. Cheryle Hart says individual dosing is one reason she prescribes compounded hormones exclusively to her patients who seek hormone-replacement therapy.


Such therapy now makes up half of her practices activity, and her patients use both Riverpoint and commercial pharmacies here that have compounding capabilities.


I really like the attitude of the compounding pharmacists, Hart says. Compounding pharmacies remind me of old-fashioned, small-town pharmacies where they really cared.


Hudek says that in addition to bio-identical hormones, Riverpoint does a lot of work in creating sterile-injectable compounds not available commercially. Sterile-injectable compounds, such as preservative-free vitamins and steroids for retaining muscle mass in patients with AIDS, are used in a variety of treatments and often are given intravenously, she says.


Riverpoint Pharmacy leases about 1,200 square feet of laboratory and office space on the basement level of the Spokane Intercollegiate Research & Technology Institute building, at 665 N. Riverpoint, as well as a small clean room there. The operation had operated in that building as a unit of Biomedex, which also was located at SIRTI.


Hudek says the company has outgrown that space, however, and is considering a move to larger quarters.


In addition to more space, the company wants to find a location with more visibility, Hudek says. She says the companys current location has excellent laboratory space, but its not a great retail location.