Appointment

Phytopharm PLC
11 June 2001

June 11  2001



Phytopharm plc



Appointment of Chief Operating Officer



Phytopharm plc (PYM: London Stock Exchange) ('Phytopharm') announces the
appointment today of Dr Daryl Rees as Chief Operating Officer for the Company.
In this executive role he will have responsibility for the conduct of
Phytopharm's research and development programmes as well as direct
responsibility for the Company's manufacturing operations worldwide.



Dr Rees joined the Company in 1999 and was appointed to the Board in September
2000 as Chief Scientific Officer.  Prior to this Dr Rees gained 10 years
experience in the discovery and clinical development of medicines as a Senior
Scientist at Wellcome and was part of a multi-disciplinary team involved in
the discovery of the L-arginine-NO pathway.  He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer
in the Department of Medicine at University College London, a former Editor of
the British Journal of Pharmacology and is Chairman of Huntingdon Local
Research Ethics Committee.



Commenting on his appointment, Richard Dixey, Chief Executive of Phytopharm,
said:

'Daryl has made a tremendous contribution to the ongoing success of
Phytopharm. As the Company matures, I am very happy to have a senior executive
of such high calibre to manage both our research and development programmes
and our expanding manufacturing operations.'





                                    -END-

Enquiries:
Phytopharm plc
Dr Richard Dixey, Chief Executive               Tel: [phone]
                                                Mobile:  [phone]

Financial Dynamics                              Tel: [phone]
David Yates





NOTES TO EDITORS

Phytopharm plc

Phytopharm's business is to take both simple and complex mixtures derived from
plant sources into full pharmaceutical development.  The US Food and Drug
Administration call such medicinal products 'Botanicals'.  Botanical products
are whole or partially purified extracts of medicinal plants in which the
chemical composition is not fully characterised. Apart from being a new sector
in the pharmaceutical market, Botanicals also act as an enabling technology to
discover single chemical entities of clinical importance from plant sources.



Phytopharm is the leading company in the development of botanical
pharmaceuticals. It has developed a portfolio of 12 such products, nine of
which are in the clinical evaluation phase.  These products have been targeted
in the five therapeutic categories of anti-inflammatory treatments,
neurological disorders, dermatology, cancer and metabolic diseases.



 More information concerning Phytopharm's activities can be found on its Web
                     site at http://www.phytopharm.co.uk.