BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WA. December 1 , 2011. Emerald BioStructures today announced the appointment of Johan Pontin as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. He succeeds Lance Stewart, Ph.D., MBA, Emerald’s co-founder, who will now serve as Chair of the Company’s Advisory Board. Mr. Pontin has served as Emerald BioStructure’s Executive Chairman since November 2009, in which he has been responsible for leading the Company’s business strategy, and has over 15 years of broad international experience in strategic planning, venture and private equity investments, and corporate and business development.
“Working together with Lance, our joint leadership over the last two years has led Emerald to significantly expand its commercial business by providing first-class customer service. As a result, we have more than doubled revenues and tripled our customer base,” said Mr. Pontin. “I look forward to expanding my involvement in the company as we continue to improve and broaden our service offerings to better serve our customers.” Mr. Pontin previously served as Founding and Managing Partner of Pod Venture Partners, an international closely held private equity firm. He also previously served as Group Manager of Corporate Finance and Mergers and Acquisitions at ASSA ABLOY AB and as a management consultant in the Financial Advisory Services group at Coopers & Lybrand LLC. Mr. Pontin has a Bachelor’s degree from Carroll School of Management at Boston College and served as a PT Boat Commander in the Royal Swedish Navy.
Dr. Stewart co-founded Emerald in 1998 and led the growth of Emerald as a business unit within two publicly traded companies (MCLS and DCGN) and the successful spin out from deCODE genetics in November 2009. During his tenure, Dr. Stewart oversaw Emerald’s research that supported the discovery of eight investigational new drug molecules for clients’ projects. In addition to his ongoing advisory role, Dr. Stewart will continue to serve on behalf of Emerald as the Co-principal Investigator for the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (SSGCID), a five-year NIAID-funded collaboration that is solving approximately 500 protein crystal structures of novel infectious disease targets.
Dr. Stewart said: “It has been a tremendous privilege to watch our talented team provide highly enabling structural insights to support our clients’ drug discovery projects. Emerald has proven itself to be a technology leader in structural proteomics, from the creation of our innovative Fragments of Life lead discovery platform to the development of numerous automation solutions for gene-to-structure research. I look forward to contributing to the company as a close advisor.”
About Emerald BioStructures
Emerald BioStructures is an integrated gene-to-structure contract research organization that provides collaborative drug discovery services to pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, academic institutions, and government facilities. The company operates a high-throughput platform leveraged for fragment-based lead discovery, structure-based drug design, and elucidation of antibody-antigen structures. Emerald’s work provides a solid foundation for the discovery of highly selective, efficacious drugs. www.emeraldbiostructures.com
Contacts:
For Emerald BioStructures:
Johan Pontin
(206) 780-8900
For Media:
Jennifer Conrad
MacDougall Biomedical Communications
(781) 235-3060
