PARIS, March 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ExonHit Therapeutics, a drug and diagnostic discovery company, today announced that Matthew Pando, Ph.D., and John Jaskowiak will join the Management Board on April 1st, 2008. At the same date, Philippe Rousseau will become President of the Management Board, until a new CEO is appointed.
Philippe Rousseau has served as CFO of ExonHit Therapeutics since 2002 and has been a member of its Management Board since 2004. John Jaskowiak, who joined ExonHit in 2006, was recently appointed Head of the Molecular Diagnostics and Genomic Services Unit and Matthew Pando, who joined the Company in 2002, was recently appointed as Head of the Therapeutics Unit.
Laurent Condomine, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, commented: "We are delighted to appoint John Jaskowiak and Matthew Pando to the Management Board, and to appoint Philippe Rousseau as President of the Management Board. The Company continues to advance development of its lead diagnostic test, for Alzheimer's disease, due to be launched in 2009, and of its lead therapeutic compound currently in Phase II, also for Alzheimer's. We are convinced that the combined expertise of Philippe, John and Matthew is essential to enable ExonHit to meet its objective of providing therapeutic and diagnostic solutions in chronic diseases, in an efficient and timely fashion. As previously announced, we have underway an active search for a new CEO for ExonHit Therapeutics."
He added: "The Supervisory Board wishes to take this opportunity to express its gratitude to the founders who have successfully developed many business opportunities, and brought the company to this important stage of development. The three founders of ExonHit will continue to provide their expertise though a consulting arrangement, focusing on ExonHit's collaboration with Allergan."
Philippe Rousseau stated: "People, technologies, patents and money are the key assets to succeed in this fast evolving industry. ExonHit Therapeutics has it all. We all are very excited about working together to exploit these assets. This is the legacy the founders left us and it is our duty to convert them into successful products for the benefit of the patients and of our shareholders. ExonHit Therapeutics has continued to make strong progress since the beginning of 2008 with the registered positive effect of our lead compound (EHT0202) in the clinical Phase 1 "scopolamine" trial and recruitments of patients both in our diagnostics and therapeutics studies going according to plan. I am convinced ExonHit Therapeutics has all the assets and talents to bring to the market innovation patients need."
About ExonHit Therapeutics
http://www.exonhit.com
ExonHit Therapeutics is the world's leader in the analysis of alternative RNA splicing, a process which when deregulated plays a key role in the onset of various diseases.
ExonHit has a multi-component commercial strategy to capture the maximum value from its leadership in alternative splicing. The Company is already generating revenues from a new generation of microarrays, SpliceArrayTM family of products that enable life science researchers to detect crucial disease-associated information. These products are marketed worldwide in conjunction with Agilent and Affymetrix. In the field of diagnostics, ExonHit has a major collaboration with bioMerieux to develop completely novel predictive blood-based cancer diagnostics, which could play a key role in improving the treatment of breast cancer and other major cancers and develops its own projects for the detection of other chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or atherosclerosis.
In parallel, ExonHit is developing its own therapeutic pipeline in the field of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. The Company has advanced drug candidates into clinical trials and is evaluating several promising pre-clinical compounds. ExonHit also has a strategic partnership with Allergan, to discover and develop new therapeutics in the areas of pain, neurological diseases and ophthalmology. This collaboration provides on-going research funding to ExonHit.
Founded in 1997, ExonHit is headquartered in Paris, France and has a U.S. facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The Company is listed on Alternext of Euronext Paris since November 17, 2005.
This press release includes only summary information and does not purport to be comprehensive. The projections, forecast and estimates of ExonHit Therapeutics which may be contained herein are for illustrative purposes only and are based on management's current views and assumptions. Such projections, forecast and estimates involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, as described at Section 4.2 "Facteurs de risque" (Risk Factors) of the Document de Base available on ExonHit Therapeutics' website (http://www.exonhit.com), that may cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those anticipated in the summary information.
In addition, ExonHit Therapeutics, its shareholders, and its affiliates, directors, officers, advisors and employees have not verified the accuracy of, and make no representations or warranties in relation to, statistical data or predictions contained in this press release that were taken or derived from third party sources or industry publications, and such statistical data and predictions are used in this press release for information purposes only.
Finally, this press release may be drafted in the French and English languages. In an event of differences between the texts, the French language version shall prevail.
philippe.rousseau@exonhit.com
CONTACT: Contact: ExonHit Therapeutics, Philippe Rousseau, C.F.O., Tel:
+33-1-58-05-47-00, philippe.rousseau@exonhit.com
