ENHANCED BREADTH OF EXPERIENCE ON POLYTHERICS’ BOARD SUPPORTS NEXT PHASE OF DEVELOPMENT
London, UK, 15 May 2012 – Mark Payton of Mercia Fund Management, a founding investor in Warwick Effect Polymers (which was acquired by Polytherics in January 2012), and a director of Polytherics Limited (“PolyTherics”), a provider of solutions to enable the development of better biopharmaceuticals, is pleased to announce that Dr Anker Lundemose and Nigel Pitchford have joined its Board.
Dr Lundemose is co-founder of several companies including Symphogen A/S and Santaris A/S and was co-founder and CEO of Prosidion Ltd, a UK subsidiary of OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc. He is also a former managing director of OSI’s venture capital arm. Dr Lundemose is medically qualified and has a PhD in molecular biology. He started his industry career in research with Novo Nordisk before moving into business development and has an international reputation in R&D productivity and for executing high profile licensing and M&A deals.
Nigel Pitchford is Managing Director of Healthcare Investments at Imperial Innovations Group plc. Nigel brings many years of experience as a venture capital investor to the PolyTherics board, drawn from his time with 3i and DFJ Esprit.
Ken Cunningham, Chairman of PolyTherics, welcomes Nigel and Anker to the board, saying, “As PolyTherics makes significant commercial progress with its expanded technology offering and its increasingly successful licensing strategy, these valuable additions to the Board set up the company for its next phase of development.”
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About PolyTherics
PolyTherics is a private UK biotech company that provides technology solutions to enable the development of better biopharmaceuticals. PolyTherics has developed proprietary technologies for the site-specific conjugation of polymers, such as polyethylene glycol (PEG), to any therapeutic peptide or protein, including antibodies, antibody fragments and protein scaffolds. Its proprietary linker chemistry and novel reagents can be used to produce protein drug conjugates, targeted imaging agents, bispecific proteins, and more stable proteins and peptides with longer half-lives. Products developed using PolyTherics’ technologies have significant product quality and production advantages, including better pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles, increased product homogeneity, consistency of manufacture and more cost-effective process economics. PolyTherics has licence agreements with Celtic Pharma and Nuron Biotech and expects products developed using its technologies to be in clinical development in the next 12-18 months. In January 2012, PolyTherics acquired Warwick Effect Polymers and extending the company’s offering to include low viscosity polymers, as an alternative to PEG, and glycopolymers for targeted drug delivery.
PolyTherics has raised over £7.5 million of private capital and is backed by a number of institutional investors, including Imperial Innovations (LON:IVO), Proven Health VCT plc, The Capital Fund, Advantage Enterprise and Innovation Fund, Mercia Funds 1 & 2, Oxford Technology VCT 3 plc and Oxford Technology 4 VCT plc, and a number of high net worth individuals with funds managed by Longbow Capital LLP.
For more information, please visit: www.polytherics.com.