Abingdon, February 1, 2010: Syntaxin, a biotechnology company developing novel biopharmaceuticals that control cell secretion, announced today the appointment of Melanie Lee, PhD, CBE, FMedSci, DSc as the company’s Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Dr Lee was formerly President of New Medicines and Executive Vice President R&D with UCB, having served as R&D Director at Celltech before its merger with UCB. Dr Lee brings a wealth of drug research and development experience to Syntaxin, through her early academic career at Cancer Research UK (as ICRF), a decade in research with GlaxoSmithKline and her later leadership of biopharmaceutical R&D at Celltech and UCB.
Syntaxin also announced the appointment of Nigel Clark, PhD as Chief Business Officer and Jon Court, PhD as Chief Development Officer. Dr Clark was formerly Vice President Business Development with Vernalis and has a strong track record in building strategic alliances, including business development leadership roles with Ribotargets and British Biotech. Dr Court was previously founder and CEO of Fulcrum Pharma, an international contract drug development business engaged in global small molecule and biopharmaceutical development, following R&D roles at Roche and Wellcome.
“We are delighted to welcome Dr Lee to the Board of Syntaxin and look forward to benefiting from her strong leadership qualities and extensive experience in biopharmaceutical R&D,” said Andrew Sandham, Chairman of the company. “The development and commercialisation of our novel cell secretion inhibitors in endocrine, inflammatory and neurological disorders will be strengthened through these three new executive appointments and our existing research and medical team.”
“It is an exciting time to join Syntaxin, which has made great progress to date and is now ready to move to the next level of success by further exploiting its unique technology platform.,” said Dr Lee. “With drug candidates in both the clinical and preclinical stage we are beginning to recognise the breadth of disease applications that our technology presents and the significant new opportunities for strategic alliances with pharmaceutical partners that this offers.”
About Syntaxin (www.syntaxin.com):
Syntaxin discovers and develops a new class of biopharmaceuticals that treat disease through selective inhibition of cell secretory processes. It is developing cell secretion inhibitors for the treatment of a range of endocrine diseases, including Acromegaly and hyperparathyroidism (associated with chronic kidney disease). The technology also has application in PNS/CNS disorders, including pain where a drug candidate is in clinical development, inflammatory diseases and post-surgical and injury rehabilitation. The company’s proprietary technology platform enables the engineering of bacterial proteins by domain substitution, to produce novel cell-specific biopharmaceuticals that inhibit cell secretion. Syntaxin has raised £22 million from leading life science investors Abingworth, SR One, JJDC, LSP and Quest and has a strategic alliance with Allergan, Inc. in analgesia.
