Avidia, Inc. Adds Dr. Jose-Carlos Gutierrez-Ramos To Its Management Team As Chief Scientific Officer

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Avidia Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing a new class of human therapeutic proteins, today announced the appointment of Jose-Carlos Gutierrez-Ramos, Ph.D., as senior vice president, research and non-clinical development and chief scientific officer.

"I am very excited to have J.C. as part of our management team. He has the right combination of industry, academia and scientific expertise to help us determine where to most effectively focus our development and discovery efforts," said Peter Van Vlasselaer, Ph.D., Avidia's chief executive officer. "The multifunctionality of our Avimer(TM) proteins opens the door to applications in a wide range of therapeutic areas. J.C. will be instrumental in helping Avidia management with identifying and developing the best product targets for our technology."

Dr. Gutierrez joins Avidia from Peptimmune, where he served as chief scientific officer, responsible for the development of peptide-based therapeutics for autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis and diabetes. Prior to Peptimmune, he served at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as vice president, inflammation. At Millennium, he led more than 100 scientists and, importantly, advanced preclinical candidates in inflammation and immunology to human trials, and advanced compounds, small molecules and antibodies from discovery through clinical development.

Dr. Gutierrez was also Assistant Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, where he led a major research team at the Center for Blood Research that generated more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. He earned his M.S. in Chemistry and his Ph.D. in Immunology from the Autonoma University of Madrid, Spain. Before coming to the United States, Dr. Gutierrez was a member of the prestigious Basel Institute for Immunology in Basel, Switzerland, and a fellow at the Max-Planck Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg, Germany.

About Avidia

Avidia is a privately held biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing a new class of human therapeutic proteins. Avidia is engineering these Avimer(TM) therapeutics against multiple validated and novel targets to address a wide range of disease areas, including inflammation, oncology and neurology. For more information, visit: www.avidia.com.

Avidia Inc.

CONTACT: Katie Compa of WeissComm Partners, +1-415-946-1078, orkcompa@weisscommpartners.com; or Paul May of Avidia, Inc., +1-650-404-2017,or pmay@avidia.com

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