PARIS, June 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ExonHit Therapeutics, a drug and diagnostic company, today announces that Loic Maurel, M.D., will join ExonHit Therapeutics on July 1st as Chief Operating Officer. At the next meeting of the Supervisory Board, he will be appointed CEO (President du Directoire).
Laurent Condomine, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, commented: "We are delighted to have Loic Maurel joining ExonHit Therapeutics. His experience and track record in major as well as in biopharmaceutical companies, both in Europe and in North America, combined with his leadership qualities, will be of great value going into the future. Together with the newly formed Management Board, the ExonHit leadership team will focus on accelerating the Company's transformation from an R&D driven organization into a market and commercially driven company enabling ExonHit to meet its ultimate goal of providing therapeutic and diagnostic solutions in chronic diseases, in an effective and timely fashion."
Prior to joining ExonHit and since 2001, Loic Maurel served as President and CEO of Debiovision Inc. in Canada, a Pharmaceutical Development Company focusing on the development of innovative therapeutics for unmet medical needs. During his tenure, he acquired clinical and regulatory experience with FDA and EMEA exposures, filing an NDA in the United States, Canada, France, and Switzerland. He also led several licensing and acquisition activities in North America, Europe, and Asia. From 1999 to 2001, Loic Maurel was Vice President Marketing and Specialty Business of Novartis Canada. He successfully launched several products and increased sales as a result of the restructuring of the Marketing and Sales organization. Prior to this, he was Global Marketing Head for the Cardiovascular, Metabolism and Respiratory Therapeutic Area at Novartis Headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. He was responsible for the worldwide launch of Diovan, the number one product of Novartis. He previously held various marketing and sales positions with progressive responsibilities at Novartis and Rhone-Poulenc (now sanofi-aventis) in France. He received his M.D. degree from the University of Bordeaux, France. Loic Maurel was Chairman of the Board of Oncomab GmbH as well as Board member of Debiovision Inc., Avance Pharma Inc., and of the BIOQuebec Association.
"I am very excited about the opportunity to lead the ExonHit Therapeutics team at this very important time for the Company. ExonHit Therapeutics is in an extremely strong position to translate its many opportunities coming from its unique discovery engine into successfully marketed commercial products," said Dr. Maurel. "I also look forward to working with Exonhit's licensing partners, bioMerieux, Allergan and others as well as forming strong relationships with the investment community." he concluded.
About ExonHit Therapeutics
http://www.exonhit.com
ExonHit Therapeutics is the world's leader in the analysis of alternative RNA splicing, a process which when deregulated plays a key role in the onset of various diseases.
ExonHit has a multi-component commercial strategy to capture the maximum value from its leadership in alternative splicing. The Company is already generating revenues from a new generation of microarrays, SpliceArrayTM family of products that enable life science researchers to detect crucial disease-associated information. These products are marketed worldwide in conjunction with Agilent and Affymetrix. In the field of diagnostics, ExonHit has a major collaboration with bioMerieux to develop completely novel predictive blood-based cancer diagnostics, which could play a key role in improving the treatment of breast cancer and other major cancers and develops its own projects for the detection of other chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or atherosclerosis.
In parallel, ExonHit is developing its own therapeutic pipeline in the field of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. The Company has advanced drug candidates into clinical trials and is evaluating several promising pre-clinical compounds. ExonHit also has a strategic partnership with Allergan, to discover and develop new therapeutics in the areas of pain, neurological diseases and ophthalmology. This collaboration provides on-going research funding to ExonHit.
Founded in 1997, ExonHit is headquartered in Paris, France and has a U.S. facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The Company is listed on Alternext of Euronext Paris (ticker: ALEHT; ISIN: FR0004054427) since November 17, 2005.
This press release includes only summary information and does not purport to be comprehensive. The projections, forecast and estimates of ExonHit Therapeutics which may be contained herein are for illustrative purposes only and are based on management's current views and assumptions. Such projections, forecast and estimates involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, as described at Section 4.2 "Facteurs de risque" (Risk Factors) of the Document de Base available on ExonHit Therapeutics' website (www.exonhit.com), that may cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those anticipated in the summary information.
In addition, ExonHit Therapeutics, its shareholders, and its affiliates, directors, officers, advisors and employees have not verified the accuracy of, and make no representations or warranties in relation to, statistical data or predictions contained in this press release that were taken or derived from third party sources or industry publications, and such statistical data and predictions are used in this press release for information purposes only.
Finally, this press release may be drafted in the French and English languages. In an event of differences between the texts, the French language version shall prevail.
SOURCE ExonHit Therapeutics SA
