Anthony Marciano
Head of Corporate Communications
Seelos Therapeutics
From Wall Street to Pharma
For nearly 20 years, Anthony Marciano spent his career on Wall Street working for investment banks focused on life sciences. When Raj Mehra, a client he covered while working at Jefferies, was looking to get a company off the ground, Anthony decided it was time to join the client-side and help a company grow from within.
Anthony’s title at Seelos is Head of Corporate Communications; however, he wears many hats. His responsibilities include writing the press releases and developing the external media communications but he also handles investment bank interactions, marketing to new and existing investors, responding to inquiries from other companies, and is often the first point of contact for potential patients inquiring about future clinical trials.
Seelos started as a private company through a partnership with Ligand Pharmaceuticals for four drugs in development. Anthony used his investment experience and connections to help the company grow further. He helped complete a reverse merger, which as a result made Seelos a publicly traded company on Nasdaq. The company acquired additional assets including intranasal racemic ketamine, trehalose IV solution for several rare diseases, and two programs focused on Parkinson’s disease from UCLA and Duke University.
In addition to helping the company raise its profile in the investment community, Anthony is also aiding in their efforts to raise Seelos’ profile on the global stage. Right now, that includes their intranasal racemic ketamine program meant for patients with suicidal depression. Historically, rates of depression and suicide increase around times of major crisis like we are currently experiencing.
“Being part of helping to get a therapy FDA approved would be amazing and that’s the goal,” Anthony says. “This new role is different since everything seems to move a lot slower in industry than on Wall Street. My days are interesting in that one phone call could be with an investor or the media asking about a trial and the next call could be a potential patient who wants to know how they can be in that trial.”
