REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Maxygen, Inc. , a biotechnology company focused on the development of improved protein drugs, today announced the appointment of Santosh Vetticaden, M.D., Ph.D., to the position of Chief Medical Officer. In the newly created role, Dr. Vetticaden will be responsible for the company’s clinical development programs. Recently, two drugs developed by Maxygen entered clinical trials: MAXY G-34 for treatment of neutropenia and MAXY-alpha, exclusively licensed to Roche, for the treatment of Hepatitis C and Hepatitis B virus infection.
“World class leadership skills, nearly 20 years of clinical development experience, and experience with patient care make Santosh an excellent addition to the Maxygen executive team,” said Russell Howard, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Maxygen. “His experience spans a broad range of therapeutic areas, including the area of coagulation -- which will be helpful as we focus in 2007 on bringing our Factor VII program closer to clinical trials.”
Dr. Vetticaden comes to Maxygen from Scios Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, where he served as vice president of clinical research. In this position, Dr. Vetticaden led all of the company’s clinical programs from Phase I through Phase IV, including Scios’ marketed drug, Natrecor(R). Prior to his tenure at Scios, Dr. Vetticaden was a global project team leader at Aventis, responsible for Lovenox(R), which obtained blockbuster status under his leadership. Dr. Vetticaden earned his M.D. from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics from Virginia Commonwealth University.
“I am delighted to be joining Maxygen, which has an impressive and novel pipeline with good potential to deliver meaningful advances in medicine,” said Dr. Vetticaden. “I look forward to working with the Maxygen leadership team to deliver on the promise of this pipeline.”
About Maxygen
Maxygen, Inc., headquartered in Redwood City, California, is focused on creating novel products using its integrated proprietary technologies for human therapeutics. Maxygen’s technologies bring together advances in molecular biology and protein modification to create novel biotechnology products.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements about our research and business prospects, including those relating to our ability to develop any human therapeutic products suitable for commercialization and our ability or plans, or the plans of our collaborators, to commence or continue the preclinical or clinical development of any existing or future product candidates. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause results to differ materially from those set forth in these statements. Among other things these risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, changing research and business priorities of Maxygen and/or its collaborators, the inherent uncertainties of pharmaceutical research and drug development, our ability to develop human therapeutic drugs in an increasingly competitive biotechnology industry and the uncertain timing of such development, the development of superior products by competitors, and our ability to establish and maintain our research and commercialization collaborations and manufacturing arrangements. These and other risk factors are more fully discussed in our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005, including under the caption “Risk Factors,” and in our other periodic SEC reports, all of which are available from Maxygen at www.maxygen.com. Maxygen disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement contained in this release as a result of new information or future events or developments.
Maxygen, Inc.
CONTACT: Michele Boudreau, Investor and Public Relations of Maxygen, Inc.,+1-650-298-5853
Web site: http://www.maxygen.com//
