NEW HAVEN, Conn., July 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Rib-X” or the “Company”), a development-stage company focused on the discovery and development of novel antibiotics for the treatment of antibiotic-resistant infections, announced today that George M. Milne, Jr., Ph.D., has been appointed Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors. Dr. Milne succeeds Harry H. Penner, Jr., who served as Board Chairman since the Company’s first Board meeting in January, 2001.
Dr. Milne, 64, joined Rib-X’s Board of Directors in January, 2004, and is currently a Venture Partner with Radius Ventures, LLC, a health and life sciences venture capital firm based in New York. Dr. Milne, a Pfizer veteran of thirty-two years, covered all elements of biomedical innovation, spanning positions including Corporate Senior Vice President with global responsibility for Human Health and Veterinary Research and Development and Executive Vice President for Global Research and Development. During Dr. Milne’s tenure from 1993 to 2001 as President for global research and development, Pfizer’s research investment increased five-fold from $493 million to over $2.3 billion; a number of significant products were developed; a substantial portfolio of collaborations with prominent biotechnology companies was built; and a broad array of important new pharmaceutical products and discovery technologies were introduced.
Susan Froshauer, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer at Rib-X, commented, “George and I have a long history of working together that goes back to our Pfizer days and I look forward to a renewed collaboration that will join his experience, that comes from his decades of focus on pharmaceutical R&D, with those of my team. Rib-X is entering a critical period, and with the added dimension of George’s Executive Chairmanship I am confident we will realize the clinical fruits of our investments in becoming a leader in translating a proprietary understanding of the ribosome into important new drug candidates. Rib-X has had the great fortune to work with a team of directors that has offered unparalleled guidance as we strive to develop new classes of antibiotics that are able to address the growing challenge of multi-drug resistant bacteria. We appreciate the important role Harry has played in the growth and development of Rib-X. We continue in this tradition with Dr. George Milne.”
“Rib-X is poised to become a leader in the antibiotic space,” said Dr. Milne. “I was attracted to Rib-X by the outstanding quality of their leadership team, the importance of their mission of discovering and developing new therapies for life threatening, resistant bacterial infections, and their proven ability to translate their structure-based drug design platform into distinctive new antibiotics. These include two compounds in later stage clinical development -- delafloxacin (RX-3341), for complicated skin and skin structure infections and radezolid (RX-1741), for community-acquired pneumonia and uncomplicated skin and skin structure infections as well as two programs with promising leads including two entirely new families of antibiotics for serious gram negative infections. Both clinical programs will report phase 2 data in the second half of the year. These compounds are a direct reflection of the effectiveness of Rib-X’s unique three-dimensional insight into the bacterial ribosome, and its translation into the development of whole families of newly designed antibiotics that address major medical needs. I look forward to my continued work with Susan and the Rib-X team as they take the Company and its programs to the next level.”
Dr. Milne also serves on a variety of boards including boards of Charles River Laboratories, Mettler-Toledo, BioStorage Technologies, Athersys, Resolvyx, the Mystic Aquarium and the New York Botanical Garden. Dr. Milne received a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale University and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
About Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a product-driven small molecule drug discovery and development company focused on the structure-based design of new classes of antibiotics. The Company’s underlying drug discovery engine capitalizes on its proprietary high-resolution crystal structure of the ribosome, which performs an essential role in the fundamental process of protein synthesis. Many known, commercially valuable antibiotics bind to the ribosome, including those used to treat both community-acquired and hospital-acquired pathogens. The Company’s integrated research strategy, which combines state of the art, proprietary computational analysis, X-ray crystallography, medicinal chemistry, microbiology and biochemistry, allows it to rapidly synthesize new agents designed to avoid typical antibiotic resistance mechanisms. Rib-X’s iterative intelligent engine has yielded several distinctive new antibiotic classes. The Company currently has two programs in human clinical trials, the radezolid (RX-1741) designer oxazolidinone program as an oral/IV agent to treat serious hospital Gram-positive infections and the delafloxacin, (RX-3341) program, a next generation fluoroquinolone, active against a broad spectrum of bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Additionally, the Company has multiple drug discovery programs. The first of these is an exciting discovery program that is well on its way toward the identification of new chemical classes of antibiotics active against multi-drug resistant Gram negative bacteria in the hospital. The second of these programs is focused on design and development of an IV and orally active macrolide for treatment of infections in the nursing home and hospital setting, including those caused by MRSA and enterococci.
For more information on the ribosome and the Rib-X mission, please visit the Company website at www.rib-x.com.
CONTACT: Investors, John Capodanno, +1-212-850-5705, matthew.duch@fd.com,
or Media, Irma Gomez-Dib, +1-212-850-5761, irma.gomez-dib@fd.com, both of
FD Life Sciences for Rib-X Pharmaceuticals
Web site: http://www.rib-x.com/
