Click here for Part I & Part II

Acquiring and developing medicines that transform the lives of cancer patients and reduce the fear that follows a cancer diagnosis

Scott Applebaum is the president of Context Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company based in Philadelphia, PA. Founded in 215, Context is dedicated to discovering, acquiring, and developing medicines for patients with breast, prostate, ovarian, and other hormone-driven cancers. The company is currently focused on development of Apristor™ (Onapristone XR), an investigational Phase 2 drug that targets progesterone receptor positive (PR+) metastatic breast cancer.

EDWIN WARFIELD: You spend a lot of your time giving back to the community. Can you tell us about some of your nonprofit work?

SCOTT APPLEBAUM: When I’m not at work, I spend as much time as I can with my family. I’ve got, at this point, three grown daughters, so no one’s home right now. My oldest daughter is getting married next month, which is very exciting, and I have two other daughters who are in college. When I’m not with them or my wife, I spend as much time as I can involved with a few different nonprofits that are really meaningful and near and dear to me.

One of those is the Boys & Girls Club of Philadelphia. I’ve been on the board there for a number of years. The work that they do in the community is really outstanding. These are kids who generally don’t have the types of opportunities I did when I was growing up, and it’s great to see that they have a place to go after school—a place where they can do their homework, a place where they can get a hot meal, because I’m not always sure that they know where that next meal is coming from or where that place is going to be to get their homework done in a quiet place. The impact that we make in the community through the Boys & Girls Club is really tremendous, and I wish we could spend more time with the clubs, more time with education, but we have a great leadership of the club here in Philadelphia. About five years ago, Joseph and Lisabeth Marziello came in. They had turned around a few other underperforming Boys & Girls Clubs, and they showed up here, and within a year or two at most, just turned around the work that we’re doing here in Philadelphia. They really ramped up the fundraising and renovated most of the clubs. We’re now in the process of trying to build a new club in Germantown. And, again, as I mentioned earlier about the impact that you make on patients and their lives, well, you see that when you go to these clubs and when you talk to these kids. You see kids who have graduated and going on to college, where I don’t know that would have happened without these clubs being there. So, I try to spend time with them whenever I can.

I’m also on the board of another nonprofit called the DEFY Foundation. This one’s a little more personal to me. One of my close colleagues and a great leader at Shire when I was there, whose name was Mike Yasick, died of a very rare disease—one that fortunately none of us had ever heard of before—it’s that rare—but it had just a devastating impact on his family. The condition is called vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. And, he, his two brothers, and his father all passed away. Mike was a leader of our ADHD business at Shire, and one of the most beloved people, and he died suddenly one day while at work. And, then six months later, his 24-year-old son died of the same condition, suddenly. And, then about a year after that, his, at the time, 21-year-old daughter was diagnosed with the condition. It’s just a devastating illness. But, Emma Yasick, Mike’s daughter, she’s tough—she’s a fighter—and she said, “We need to do something. We need to take control of this disease.” So, she and her fiancé started a nonprofit foundation called The DEFY Foundation—Defeating Ehlers-Danlos for Yasick. We’ve been active in the community, raising funds and raising awareness. Over the last few years, we’ve done 5Ks, we’ve done golf outings, we’ve done newsletters. We’ve raised about $80,000. We’ve made a $25,000 grant to one of the few researchers in the field who is actually down at Hopkins.

We have a really exciting event coming up in May. We are hosting an international symposium of researchers from around the world who specialize in vascular Ehlers-Danlos. There’s not too many of them, but there’s been some exciting developments. There’s actually a company that is developing a drug for it now called Acer Therapeutics, and they’ve provided a sponsorship to us. We’re very grateful for that. I have a very close personal relationship with the family, and they’re just the most terrific people you’ve ever met, and I’m just so inspired by their spirit and how they carry on and how they continue to fight this disease and fight for a cure, and I’m optimistic we’ll get there. Whenever I spend time with them, it’s very rewarding time.

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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