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     Founded in 1984, Derma Sciences, Inc. (Princeton, NJ) is a fully integrated manufacturer, marketer, and supplier of a complete line of wound and skin care products. The company’s products fall into five categories: Advanced Wound Care, Traditional Wound Care, Burn Care, Skin Care and Bathing, and Specialty Securement and Closure Devices. With two wholly owned and operated manufacturing facilities in Toronto and China, Derma Sciences also offers contract manufacturing services for private label products. Based on the premise of topical nutritional wound therapy, Dermagran®, the company’s first product, helped Derma Sciences become a leader in the burgeoning advanced wound care market. Since that time, the advanced wound care market has shifted from the basic management of moisture/occlusion at the site of a wound to more “active” therapies. As the science and fundamental understanding of chronic wounds has advanced, Derma Sciences has responded with several new dressings.

     In preparation for his current role as CEO at Derma Sciences, Ed Quilty served in various C-Level executive positions relevant to overseeing his current staff. He has a Bachelors degree in Economics as well as an undergraduate degree from Missouri State University and an MBA from Ohio University. “The first 12 years of my career was with Baxter American Hospital supply (Deerfield, IL) and then I had various roles with increasing marketing responsibilities, working the corporate side and running different divisions,” he says.

     Ed also served as the Executive Vice President of McGaw Inc. an IV solution company, until 1992 when he transitioned into the role of CEO of Life Medical Sciences (Edison, NJ); later, he was the CEO of MedChem Products. Before coming to Derma Sciences, Ed was the CEO of Palatin Technologies.

     Derma Sciences does not rest on its laurels. In addition to its manufacturing capabilities, the company also has a pharmaceutical product under development with an initial indication for healing diabetic foot ulcers; the Phase II trial will be completed during the third quarter of this year. Future indications will include other chronic ulcers, burns, and scar prevention/reduction.

      “We manufacture more than 2,000 SKUs in Canada, Mexico, and China,” Ed explains. “We’ve developed and/or introduced five new Advanced Wound Care products in the last 3 years, including our proprietary line of Medihoney® dressings. We are very proud to say that, considering the relative size of our sales force in the US versus those of our competitors, Medihoney is arguably one of the most successful new dressings to be introduced into the advanced wound care market in the last 7 to 8 years.”

     Medihoney first started to build its reputation in helping to resolve stalled wounds that otherwise may not have healed. It was not long before Derma Sciences started to see people expanding use of the product. When certain enzymatic debridement products were pulled from the market, it gave clinicians the opportunity to also assess Medihoney as a strong product for debridement. “We are still in the infancy stage of our product development and sales with Medihoney,” says Ed. “To support the consistent growth in demand, we have 20 sales positions—up from the 10 we had last year — and will have all positions filled by June. From a clinical evidence perspective, since Medihoney has been introduced, there have been two randomized controlled studies published, which is very impressive for an early stage product.