We believe that exploring opportunities to expand the market potential for our existing commercial stage products represents our lowest risk growth strategy. The Company is continually evaluating new opportunities to further the clinical development of our products, whether by exploring new potential indications to expand labeling and help new patient populations or by developing new clinical data to further support our existing markets and the efforts of our commercial organization.
The Company focuses on the hospital acute care and gastroenterology market segments that both feature concentrated prescriber bases. Our sales and marketing efforts are focused on expanding our reach within the medical community and keeping healthcare providers informed of how our products are able to improve the quality of care for their patients. The combination of our ongoing development activities and marketing efforts drives the success of our products.
A second component of our growth strategy is to acquire approved brands that serve patient populations that our sales and marketing team can effectively reach. We seek proprietary products that provide a differentiated benefit to patients. In addition, we target products that could benefit from the promotional capabilities of our sales and marketing organization or that could be expanded to help new patient groups through the efforts of our development team.
Where appropriate, Cumberland is poised to acquire and negotiate rights to those products to support and commercialize them. In acquiring these already approved products, we are able to add to our growing portfolio to meet the needs of patients. Our strong balance sheet and cash flow provide the financial resources to support these acquisition efforts.
Another component of Cumberland’s growth strategy is to build upon this success and actively seek new product candidates to expand our pipeline. We seek products that fit within the strategic focus of our company and can address unmet or poorly met medical needs.
Our business development efforts are led by a multi-disciplinary team with significant pharmaceutical and transactional expertise. We proactively seek out and evaluate product candidates from a variety of sources, including our international network of advisors. Highly critical selection criteria guide our acquisition strategy as we pursue new development stage assets that fit our medical expertise and commercial capabilities. We believe our current product portfolio is representative not only of our discriminating efforts but also of the types of opportunities we seek.
These efforts allow Cumberland to selectively build a portfolio of differentiated, safe, and effective products for underserved patient populations.
Our majority-owned subsidiary, Cumberland Emerging Technologies (CET), is jointly owned by Cumberland Pharmaceuticals, Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Technology Development Corporation. CET is working with leading universities to bridge the development gap and progress biopharmaceutical technologies from the research laboratory to the commercial marketplace. CET’s grant program helps researchers and organizations prepare proposals for development funding, primarily through federal and state programs.
Through CET, Cumberland is able to foster and incubate interesting product candidates so that we may identify potential commercial opportunities and determine if there is a good strategic fit for the company. Our ifetroban development program is an example of this successful partnership between Cumberland and CET.