AnaptysBio, Inc. Adds Dr. David L. Lacey and Dr. Michael Gallatin to Therapeutic Advisory Board

SAN DIEGO, March 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- AnaptysBio, Inc., a privately held therapeutic antibody company, today announced the addition of David L. Lacey, M.D. and Michael Gallatin, Ph.D. to the company's Therapeutic Advisory Board (TAB). Drs. Lacey and Gallatin will join two founding members of AnaptysBio's TAB, Jan de Vries, Ph.D. and Nicholas B. Lydon, Ph.D.

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AnaptysBio's TAB is constituted to oversee the company's internal product pipeline, including the identification of antibody targets, selection of lead candidates for preclinical development and design of clinical development strategies. AnaptysBio is currently advancing internal programs across a number of therapeutic areas, including autoimmunity/inflammation, cancer immunotherapy and muscle wasting disorders.

"We are pleased to augment our TAB with the addition of Dr. Lacey and Dr. Gallatin's world-recognized expertise," said Hamza Suria, AnaptysBio's president and chief executive officer. "AnaptysBio will continue to expand its product pipeline with compelling therapeutic antibody candidates generated using our SHM-XEL platform."

Dr. Lacey is a former senior vice president and head of discovery research at Amgen with over 30 years of basic and clinical research experience. Dr. Lacey played a fundamental role in the discovery of the OPG/RANKL/RANK pathway at Amgen as well as the development of the anti-RANKL human antibody known as denosumab. He was most recently responsible for leading a group of over 1,200 FTEs in Amgen's discovery research unit across hundreds of preclinical projects in hematology/oncology, inflammation, metabolic disorders and neuroscience. Dr. Lacey received an M.D. from the University of Colorado and was trained in pathology at the Washington University Medical Center, St. Louis, MO.

Dr. Gallatin is a former vice president and scientific director of ICOS Corporation, where his responsibilities included discovery, preclinical research, medicinal chemistry and process chemistry groups, including those responsible for worldwide development and launch of tadalafil (Cialis®). Subsequently, Dr. Gallatin helped found Stromedix, which focused on novel treatments for chronic fibrotic diseases and was recently acquired by Biogen Idec. Dr. Gallatin also co-founded and was president of Calistoga Pharmaceuticals, the first company to demonstrate clinical benefit of isoform-selective PI3 kinase inhibition, subsequently acquired by Gilead. He has also been a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Keystone Symposia, Caprion, and the University of Texas Department of Chemistry, a member of the BioSeek Board of Directors and has recently also joined the Board of Directors of the Benaroya Research Institute. Dr. Gallatin received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta's Department of Immunology, and discovered the first cell adhesion molecule implicated in site-selective leukocyte traffic while a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell and American Cancer Society fellow at Stanford University in the laboratory of Dr. Irving Weissman. Dr. Gallatin is a former faculty member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and is currently a senior advisor to Frazier Healthcare.

Dr. de Vries is a former head of the Novartis Research Institutes for BioMedical Research in Basel, Switzerland. While at Novartis, Dr. de Vries led the early development of many drugs that are now on the market or in late-stage clinical development, including Elidel® for the treatment of atopic dermatitis, Ilaris® (canakinumab) for the treatment of various chronic inflammatory diseases and diabetes, Gilenia® for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and AIN-457, an IL-17 mAb for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. Dr. de Vries received his Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Amsterdam and spent two years as a visiting scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Lydon is a co-founder of AnaptysBio and won the 2009 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award along with two other scientists for the development of Gleevec® (imatinib), a molecularly-targeted treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia, which converted a fatal cancer into a manageable chronic condition. Dr. Lydon holds a doctorate in biochemistry from University of Dundee, Scotland, and has previously served as vice president, small molecule drug discovery at Amgen, Inc. Prior to joining Amgen, Dr. Lydon was the founder, CEO and president of Kinetix, Inc., a biotech company focused on the development of selective protein kinase inhibitors.

About AnaptysBio
Founded in 2005, AnaptysBio, Inc. is a privately-held company focused on the generation of antibody therapeutics, and the leader in the use of somatic hypermutation (SHM) for antibody discovery and optimization. SHM is the body's natural process for generating potent antibodies. AnaptysBio's proprietary SHM-XEL platform, which couples fully human antibody libraries with in vitro somatic hypermutation (SHM) in mammalian cells to generate high affinity lead candidates, replicates key features of the human immune system and overcomes limitations of prior antibody technologies. By harnessing the natural mechanism of antibody maturation under controlled conditions, SHM-XEL allows for the selection of optimal antibody properties such as high affinity, functionality, cross-reactivity and epitope diversity. AnaptysBio has established broad intellectual property around the use of SHM and is currently building a pipeline of novel therapeutic antibody product candidates. Major investors in AnaptysBio include founding investor Avalon Ventures, as well as Alloy Ventures, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, and Novo A/S. For more information, visit www.anaptysbio.com.

Contacts:

Julie Rathbun
Rathbun Communications
julie@rathbuncomm.com
206-769-9219

SOURCE AnaptysBio, Inc.