Appointment of CEO

RNS Number : 5993T

e-Therapeutics plc

09 January 2017

 

e-Therapeutics plc

("e-Therapeutics" or the "Company")

Appointment of Amgen Executive Director as Chief Executive

Oxford, UK - 9 January 2017 - e-Therapeutics plc (AIM: ETX), the drug discovery company, announces that it has appointed Dr. Raymond Barlow as Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Barlow will take up the role on or before 1 May 2017, at which point he will be appointed to the e-Therapeutics Board of Directors.

Dr. Barlow, aged 48, is currently Executive Director of Corporate Development at Amgen Inc. based in Switzerland. He brings to e-Therapeutics broad experience of drug discovery, develop-ment and commercialization, acquired through regional and global roles in the biotech and pharmaceutical sector. His previous responsibilities have included scientific, business and corporate roles with Astra Zeneca, Crucell and Johnson and Johnson. He will be relocating to Oxford.

e-Therapeutics' Chairman, Mr. Iain Ross said:

"On behalf of the team, I welcome Ray to e-Therapeutics. He joins the Company at an exciting time and is a consummate business professional who brings a wealth of relevant experience from the international pharmaceutical and biotech sector. I am confident that, as CEO, he will lead us through the next stage of the Company's development and achieve both our short and long term goals.

"I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the e-Therapeutics team for the tremendous effort they have made over the last six months whilst the business has been in transition and has refocused its strategy."

Ray Barlow added, "As our understanding of human disease and genetics deepens, it is clear that that the traditional "reductionist" approach to drug discovery is only potentially part of the solution. I believe that e-Therapeutics' computational-based, network biology approach provides a valuable, productive and differentiated means to create novel medicines to treat inherently complex diseases.

"Once I'm on board, my aim is to continue building the network pharmacology platform, generating additional supporting data for the internal programmes, and on communicating to the industry the utility of this approach in addressing some of the biggest challenges it faces in treating serious and debilitating diseases.  I am looking forward to working with the e-Therapeutics' team and driving the Company forward to reach its full potential."

Background Information on Dr Raymond Barlow

Having completed a BSc in Chemistry from Leeds University in 1990, Dr. Barlow moved to the University of Manchester from where he gained a PhD in Chemistry in 1994. He then spent a year at McGill University, Montreal as a post-doctoral fellow before entering the pharmaceutical industry as a senior scientist with Zeneca in Pharmaceutical R&D's Technology Access and Strategic Alliances team, of which he later became Team Leader in 1998.

Following the merger with Astra, he became a Global Manager in the Discovery and Development function, in-licensing technologies and working on the development of a range of molecules, including those in oncology, cardiovascular, respiratory and inflammatory disease areas.

Upon completion of a year as a Senior Business Analyst he was appointed Director of Corporate Development, reporting into AstraZeneca's (AZ) London HQ. In this role he was involved in a number of transactions and was part of the team responsible for shaping AZ's strategy with the Board, including its move into biologics.  During this period he graduated from Manchester Business School with an MBA and in 2004 he stepped out of the Business Development function into a Regional commercial leadership role in Brussels covering 14 countries in CEE and Russia.

After 10 years with AZ, Ray moved into the biotech sector working in senior business development roles for Microscience Limited and Emergent Solutions Inc (EBS: NASDAQ). During this period Ray out-licensed a portfolio of Meningitis B assets to Sanofi and was involved with the team that successfully listed EBS on NASDAQ. Ray then spent five years running his own business (BD Solutions Limited) focused upon aiding clients on corporate development and commercialisation projects. During this period he was CEO of Asterion, and delivered deals with Genzyme and Ipsen.

In 2010, he joined Crucell and was instrumental in the sale to Johnson & Johnson for whom he worked on a wide range of infectious disease and vaccine deals, before joining Amgen in 2012. At Amgen he has also completed numerous deals including immuno-oncology deals with Boehringer Ingelheim and Genenta, international commercial deals with GSK and Mitsubishi Tanabe as well as playing a key part in the acquisition of Onyx and Dezima Pharma BV.

Additional Information

The following information is being disclosed pursuant to Rule 17 and paragraph (g) of Schedule 2 of the AIM Rules for Companies.

Full name: Raymond John Barlow.

Dr Barlow does not hold any shares in the Company.

In the previous five years, Dr Barlow was a director of BD Solutions (Partners in Corporate Growth) Limited.

-Ends-

For more information, please contact:

e-Therapeutics plc Iain Ross, Chairman Steve Medlicott, Finance Director	Tel: [phone] www.etherapeutics.co.uk
Numis Securities Limited Michael Meade / Freddie Barnfield (Corporate Finance) James Black (Corporate Broking)	Tel: [phone] www.numis.com
Instinctif Partners Melanie Toyne Sewell / Deborah Bell	Tel: [phone] Email: [e-mail]

About e-Therapeutics plc

e-Therapeutics (AIM: ETX) is a drug discovery company with a proprietary discovery platform based on advances in network pharmacology and chemical biology. The Company is applying its platform to the discovery of new drug candidates. The therapeutic focus of the Company's activity is in immuno-oncology, addressing drug resistance in targeted cancer therapies and anti-infectives. The platform is highly productive, yielding multiple potent and selective molecules at a much higher rate and more quickly than is reported for conventional drug discovery. 

e-Therapeutics has a variety of preclinical stage assets, ETS2300, telomerase inhibition in anti-cancer; ETS3100, small molecule anti-TNFα; ETS2400, Hedgehog pathway inhibition; ETS5200, broad spectrum antivirals together with two immuno-oncology checkpoint projects.  

The Company is fully funded to advance its drug discovery programmes. It is based in Oxford, UK. For more information, visit www.etherapeutics.co.uk.

 

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