Abzena PLC Senior Executive Appointments

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Abzena PLC

24 October 2016

Abzena plc

Abzena makes two senior executive appointments to drive growth of international business

Cambridge, UK, 24 October 2016 - Abzena plc (AIM: ABZA, 'Abzena' or the 'Group'), a life sciences group providing services and technologies to enable the development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, announces that John Manzello and Sven Lee have taken up senior executive appointments with Abzena in the US as President, Abzena US and Chief Business Officer, respectively.

John Manzello will be responsible for the Group's operations in San Diego and Bristol, near Philadelphia, whilst Sven will lead Abzena's global business development. These two appointments provide strong industry experience to support and grow the business, particularly in the US where Abzena is adding manufacturing capacity and capability for antibodies and antibody drug conjugates (ADCs).

John Manzello was previously President of San Diego's Promosome LLC which he joined as President & CEO in April 2007. Using his 25 years of biotechnology executive and director level experience, John expanded the business development, strategic alliances and intellectual property portfolio for the company's suite of synthetic biology technologies. Prior to joining Promosome, John's relevant biotechnology experience included business and commercial development roles at San Diego's Althea Technologies and Massachusetts-based companies Cohesive Technologies, Genzyme Transgenics (GTC) and GTC's contract subsidiary, Primedica.

Sven Lee joins Abzena from Terumo BCT where he was Director of Global Sales & Business Development, focusing on cell therapy technologies and licensing platform technologies to biotech companies. He has 20 years of extensive business development, sales and marketing expertise. Prior to Terumo BCT, Sven was Vice President, Global Business Development for the biologics business unit at Catalent Pharma Solutions, having previously held commercial positions with Crucell (Johnson & Johnson), Biogen and Sanofi.

Dr John Burt, Abzena's CEO, said:

"Bringing John and Sven on to the Abzena global executive management team enables us to drive further growth of the US business units and strengthens our international business development activities. Recruitment of these highly experienced individuals is a powerful endorsement of Abzena's ability to deliver innovative and value-adding services and technology solutions to enable the development of better biopharmaceuticals."

Enquiries:

 
 Abzena plc                       [phone] 
 John Burt, Chief Executive 
  Officer 
 Julian Smith, Chief Financial 
  Officer 
 
 Instinctif Partners              [phone] 
 Melanie Toyne Sewell /           [e-mail] 
  Rozi Morris 
 

About Abzena

Abzena (AIM: ABZA) provides proprietary technologies and complementary services to enable the development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products, a growing area that requires specialist knowledge and expertise. The Group has a global customer base which includes the majority of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies as well as large and small biotech companies and academic groups.

The term "Abzena inside" is used by Abzena to describe products that have been created using its proprietary technologies and are being developed by its partners, and include Composite Human Antibodies(TM) and ThioBridge(TM) Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs). Abzena has the potential to earn future licence fees, milestone payments and/or royalties on "Abzena inside" products.

Abzena offers the following services and technologies across its principal sites in Cambridge (UK), San Diego, California (USA) and Bristol, Pennsylvania (USA).

-- Immunogenicity assessment, protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins, and cell line development for manufacture.

-- Contract process development and manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, including monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins, vaccines, and gene therapy and cell therapy products, for preclinical and clinical studies.

-- Proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies for antibody drug conjugate development and solutions for optimizing the therapeutic properties of biopharmaceuticals.

-- Contract chemistry and bioconjugation business focused on ADCs and is establishing the capability to manufacture ADCs to GMP standards.

For more information, please see www.abzena.com

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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October 24, 2016 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)