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Direvo Chief Executive Dr. Thomas von Rüden joins
Affitech Supervisory Board
OSLO, NORWAY - May 16, 2007
- The human antibody company, Affitech AS, announced today the appointment of Dr. Thomas von Rüden, currently the Chief Executive Officer of Cologne, Germany-based Direvo Biotech AG as a Member of its Supervisory Board.
With more than 14 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry including human antibody area, Dr. von Rüden took his current position as the Chief Executive Officer of Direvo in April 2006 from the Vienna-based Institute for Medical Genome Research. Previously, he was the Chief Scientific Officer and Executive VP Business Development with MorphoSys AG, the Germany-based antibody company in Munich for six years. After an academic career at the European Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Heidelberg, and the Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Dr von Rüden joined Boehringer Ingelheim in Vienna, where he was appointed Director of Molecular Biology and was responsible for drug discovery in oncology. He holds several advisory board positions in biotechnology companies and public research organisations. Dr von Rüden studied biology in Frankfurt, Princeton, and Mainz, from which he received a Ph.D.
"I am indeed honored to be appointed to the Company's Board of Directors", said Dr von Rüden."Affitech is a unique antibody company, possessing not only proven target identification technologies in the area of oncology, but also a proprietary antibody generation platform. They have several antibody product candidates in development and have built quite a few business collaborations with leading biotechnology and pharma companies. The combination of these elements positions the company well for its continued development. Affitech's outlook is very promising, and I look forward to contributing to the future direction of the company".
Welcoming the appointment Dr. Martin Welschof, Chief Executive Officer of Affitech commented: "We are delighted about Dr. von Rüden's joining of our Board of Directors at the current exciting phase of the Company's growth. We now have collaborations with leading antibody players including Roche, Xoma, Viventia and Peregrine. In addition we have consolidated our IP position by in licensing and leveraging our key Breitling IP and have put several product candidates in the preclinical development pipeline. We have already been building up both our management and scientific teams in order to accelerate development of our product candidates, as well as those of our partners. The appointment of Thomas to the Board will bring further invaluable experience and industry contacts as we strive for continued success in the antibody landscape."
Note to editors:
Affitech AS is a privately held human therapeutic antibody discovery and development company with headquarters and R&D facilities in Oslo, Norway and its US subsidiary in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Company's current disease focus is oncology. Affitech has concluded several business deals with commercial organizations such as Roche, Peregrine, XOMA, NatImmune, Viventia, Dyax, Micromet, Pharmexa and others. Further information at www.affitech.com.
For further information please contact Affitech AS
Martin Welschof, CEO
Tel: +47 22 95 88 77
Email:
Web page: http://www.affitech.com
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