MALVERN, Pa., March 25, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Recro Pharma, Inc. (Nasdaq:REPH), a revenue generating specialty pharmaceutical company focused on therapeutics for hospitals and other acute care settings, today announced the appointment of Arnaud Ajdler to the Company’s Board of Directors. Mr. Ajdler, managing partner of Engine Capital, L.P., brings over 15 years of finance and corporate governance experience to Recro’s Board.

“Arnaud brings to Recro significant investment and corporate governance experience gained from his participation on multiple public company boards,” said Gerri Henwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Recro Pharma. “He is a welcome addition to our Board of Directors, and we look forward to his insights.”

Mr. Ajdler founded and has been the managing partner for Engine Capital L.P., a value-oriented investment firm, since 2013. Prior to that, he was a senior managing director and a partner at Crescendo Partners, a value-oriented activist investment firm, from 2003 to 2013. Before joining Crescendo Partners, Mr. Ajdler worked as a management consultant for Mercer Management Consulting and Boston Consulting Group, as well as at Deutsche Bank. He is also an adjunct professor at the Columbia Business School where he teaches a course in Value Investing. Mr. Ajdler has been a board member and member of the compensation committee of Stewart Information Services Corporation since May 2014 as well as a director, chair of the compensation committee and member of the governance committee of Hill International, Inc. since October 2018. He also served as a director and on various committees on the boards of a number of companies, including Charming Shoppes, Inc., Imvescor Restaurant Group Inc., StarTek, Inc., Destination Maternity, O’Charley’s Inc., and The Topps Company.

Mr. Ajdler earned a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, an SM in Aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

About Recro Pharma, Inc.

Recro Pharma is a specialty pharmaceutical company that operates through two business divisions, an Acute Care, hospital product division and a revenue-generating contract development and manufacturing, or CDMO, division, located in Gainesville, GA. The Acute Care division is primarily focused on developing innovative products for the hospital and other acute care settings. The Company’s lead product candidate is a proprietary injectable form of meloxicam, a long-acting preferential COX-2 inhibitor. IV meloxicam has successfully completed two pivotal Phase III clinical efficacy trials, a large double-blind placebo-controlled Phase III safety trial and four Phase II clinical efficacy trials, as well as other safety studies. Recro’s Complete Response to the CRL for IV meloxicam was accepted for filing by the FDA in early October 2018 and assigned a PDUFA date of March 24, 2019. On March 22, 2019 Recro announced that FDA had provided a second CRL for IV Meloxicam. The Company is evaluating the path forward for IV Meloxicam and plans to schedule a meeting with the FDA. As injectable meloxicam is in the non-opioid class of drugs, if approved, the Company believes it has the potential to overcome many of the issues associated with commonly prescribed opioid therapeutics, including respiratory depression, constipation, excessive nausea and vomiting, as well as having no addictive potential while maintaining meaningful analgesic effects for relief of pain. The Company’s CDMO division leverages its formulation expertise to develop and manufacture pharmaceutical products using its proprietary delivery technologies and other manufacturing services for commercial and development-stage partners who commercialize or plan to commercialize these products. These collaborations can result in revenue streams including royalties, profit sharing, research and development and manufacturing fees, which support continued operations for its CDMO division, and it contributes non-dilutive funding for the development and pre-commercialization activities of its Acute Care division.