CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Cequent Pharmaceuticals, a pioneer in the development of novel products to deliver RNAi-based treatments to prevent and treat human disease, announced that Ted Hibben has joined the company as chief business officer. Mr. Hibben comes to Cequent from Coley Pharmaceutical Group, where he was most recently vice president of business development and alliance management and played a key role in the company’s $233 million acquisition by Pfizer in 2008. Coley was a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company specializing in vaccine adjuvant technology and a new class of immunomodulatory drug candidates designed to fight cancers, asthma, infectious diseases, and autoimmune diseases.
“Strategic partners have been key to Cequent’s success to date and will become even more important as we continue to move our tkRNAi technology from the laboratory into clinical development against multiple diseases. Ted brings to Cequent a wealth of experience orchestrating a full range of strategic collaborations with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies - from drug discovery, research, and clinical-development partnerships to licensing agreements,” said Cequent President and CEO, Peter Parker. “Beyond his role in the Pfizer acquisition, Ted’s recent track record includes closing nearly a dozen alliances totaling $750 million of itemized pre-commercial development milestones with companies like Novartis, GSK, and Merck.”
Regarding Mr. Hibben’s role at Cequent, Mr. Parker said, “Ted will focus on external partnering activities in three major areas. On our inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) program, he will look for partner(s) to further develop one or more of the 11 targets we are working on for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis; he will also seek to partner our CEQ508 candidate for FAP, slated for a Phase I clinical trial in 2009. FAP (familial adenomatous polyposis) is an inherited precursor to colon cancer that causes hundreds of polyps to form in the colon. In addition, Ted will interact with companies that would like to license our technology to deliver therapeutic RNAi for novel metabolic, oncology, or other targets.”
Previously, Mr. Hibben served as a senior executive and a corporate and business development consultant for public and private biopharmaceutical companies, including, among others: Centagenetix, Inc., in conjunction with its merger into Elixir Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Pericor Science, Inc., where he led strategic planning, business operations, and product development for this start-up advancing a novel epithelial drug-delivery technology; and Ontogeny, Inc. (now Curis, Inc.), where he guided Ontogeny’s merger with Reprogenesis and Creative Biomolecules. Mr. Hibben has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College.
About Cequent Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (www.cequentpharma.com)
An early-stage biopharmaceutical company, Cequent is pioneering the development of novel therapeutics to prevent and treat a wide range of human disorders - from inflammatory disease to cancer - based on the company’s proprietary technology, TransKingdom RNA interference (tkRNAi). Cequent’s first products, now in pre-clinical development, are drug candidates targeting colon-cancer prevention and inflammatory bowel disease. The company designed its powerful tkRNAi technology to deactivate specific disease-causing genes safely and effectively, using non-pathogenic bacteria as an engine to produce and deliver RNAi directly into cells. It is based on ground-breaking scientific research originating at the Institut Pasteur (Paris, France) and at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School. A privately held company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cequent was established in 2006.
CONTACT: Caroline Grossman, Cequent Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,
+1-781-771-5579, caroline.grossman@gmail.com
Web site: http://www.cequentpharma.com/
