Global Alliance For TB Drug Development Appoints Mark Kessel To Board Of Directors

NEW YORK, Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) today announced the appointment of Mr. Mark Kessel to its Board of Directors. The TB Alliance is the only non-profit drug developer focused exclusively on developing and delivering a faster cure for tuberculosis, a disease that kills someone every 15 seconds.

Mark Kessel is the CEO and managing director of Symphony Capital LLC, which he co-founded in 2002 to manage a private equity fund that invests in the clinical development of novel biopharmaceutical products.

“We are pleased to welcome Mr. Kessel to the Board,” said Dr. Gijs Elzinga, Chairman of the Board for the TB Alliance and Deputy Director-General, Netherlands’ National Institute of Public Health and the Environment. “His extensive expertise in advising biopharmaceutical companies to accelerate the advancement of their pipelines towards registration should serve the TB Alliance well, particularly as more drug candidates enter clinical testing.”

Mr. Kessel is widely recognized as the inventor of structured financial products for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. From 1979 to 2001, Mr. Kessel was a partner at Shearman & Sterling, a leading international law firm. He served as the firm’s managing partner from 1990 to 1994.

“The TB Alliance has created an impressive pipeline in a few short years through precedent-setting agreements with leading biotech and pharma companies -- demonstrating an efficient use of its capital,” said Mr. Kessel. “I look forward to helping the TB Alliance further streamline its process and deliver an effective cure for one of the greatest public health threats of our time.”

The TB Alliance has built the largest pipeline of TB drugs in history, with ten drugs in development or in human testing. It recently announced an agreement with Bayer HealthCare AG to test Bayer’s antibiotic moxifloxacin for its potential to shorten TB therapy by 2-3 months in a global clinical trial program with up to 2,500 patients. Bayer has committed to ensure the drug would be priced affordably for patients with TB in the developing world.

Mr. Kessel has been appointed to serve a 3-year term. Mr. Kessel also serves as a Director of Antigenics Inc., a Boston-area biotechnology company with over 80 new patents. He has served on the Board of Directors of Heller Financial Inc., and Harrods (UK) Ltd. Mr. Kessel received a B.A. with Honors in Economics from the City College of New York, and a J.D., magna cum laude from Syracuse University.

About the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development

The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance) is a not-for-profit, public-private partnership accelerating the discovery and/or development of affordable, new anti-TB drugs that will shorten treatment, be effective against multi-drug resistant strains, treat HIV-TB co-infection, and improve treatment of latent infection. Working with public and private research laboratories worldwide, it is leading the development of the first, most comprehensive portfolio of TB drug candidates in three decades. It operates with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Netherlands Ministry for Cooperation Development. For more information on TB drug development, moxifloxacin and the TB Alliance, please visit http://www.tballiance.org.

Global Alliance for TB Drug Development

CONTACT: Denielle Sachs, Global Alliance for TB Drug Development,+1-212-227-7540, ext 202

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