ShangPharma Appoints Pharmaceutical Executive Dr. Mitchell Reff Chief Biologics Officer

SHANGHAI, Jan. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- ShangPharma Corporation is pleased to announce that Dr. Mitchell Reff has joined the company as Chief Biologics Officer. Dr. Reff brings over 30 years of research and development experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Dr. Reff's appointment further strengthens the world-class technical capabilities of ChemPartner's Biologics Division and offers Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology companies from around the world first-rate strategic and technical expertise to discover and manufacture novel first-in-class and best-in-class biologic clinical development candidates to advance into the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology company pipelines.

Dr. Reff received his Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology from Stanford University School of Medicine, and his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This was followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, and a position at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Reff then spent 8 years at SmithKline Laboratories working on gene expression in mammalian cells and protein engineering. After that, he joined Idec Pharmaceuticals as head of molecular biology in 1990. Dr. Reff had a distinguished 21 year career at Idec, and later at Biogen Idec. He was Vice President Discovery Oncology at Biogen Idec running multiple bicoastal oncology groups developing small molecule and recombinant protein therapeutic molecules for oncology and delivered 6 novel oncology drugs into clinical trials in 5 years.

In early 1990s, Dr. Reff was Project Leader targeting B cell lymphoma, building and expressing the chimeric mouse-human anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody (Rituxan), the first monoclonal antibody approved to treat a tumor. Dr. Reff led the efforts from discovery until Rituxan entered its pivotal clinical trial.

Dr. Reff is well-recognized in the pharmaceutical and research community having been listed as an inventor on approximately 29 patents and patent applications, and as an author in nearly 100 scientific publications and presentations.

About ShangPharma:

ShangPharma Corp is a leading contract research organization (CRO) providing a broad range of high-quality, integrated services across both drug discovery and drug development to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies discover and develop novel drug candidates efficiently. The Company today has a team of nearly 2,000 skilled scientists in 1 million square feet of state-of-the-art research facilities and office space. For more information, please visit: http://www.ShangPharma.com. ChemPartner is a wholly owned subsidiary of ShangPharma Corp and also the main brand of the group.

SOURCE ShangPharma