Protagonist Therapeutics Appoints Five Prime Therapeutics CEO, Lewis T. "Rusty" Williams, to its Board of Directors

NEWARK, Calif., June 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: PTGX) today announced the appointment of Lewis T. "Rusty" Williams, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Five Prime Therapeutics, to the Protagonist Board of Directors.

"Rusty is a highly accomplished leader in the healthcare sector with an exceptional track record of both industry success and academic excellence," said Dinesh V. Patel, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Protagonist. "We will benefit from his deep-rooted insights and experience as Protagonist continues to grow beyond a technology platform company and into a mature drug development and commercialization organization."

"I am incredibly impressed by Protagonist's peptide technology platform that has rapidly generated two clinical stage assets and a third pre-clinical asset that recently attracted a partnership with Janssen," said Dr. Williams, M.D., Ph.D.  "I look forward to working with the Board to help the company achieve the full potential of its versatile platform and develop innovative assets to address unmet medical needs."

Dr. Williams founded Five Prime Therapeutics in December 2001 and has served as that company's President and Chief Executive Officer since August 2011, as its Executive Chairman from July 2003 to January 2012, and as Chairman of the Board since March 2016. Previously, Dr. Williams spent seven years at Chiron Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company, now Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Inc., most recently as its Chief Scientific Officer. He also served on Chiron's board of directors from 1999 to 2001. Prior to joining Chiron, Dr. Williams was a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and served as director of the University's Cardiovascular Research Institution and Daiichi Research Center. Dr. Williams also has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and co-founded COR Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on cardiovascular disease. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Williams was previously a member of the boards of directors of COR Therapeutics, Inc. and Beckman Coulter, Inc., each of which was a public company. Dr. Williams received a B.S. from Rice University and an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Duke University.

About Protagonist Therapeutics

Protagonist Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with a proprietary technology platform which is utilized to discover and develop novel peptide-based drugs to address significant unmet medical needs. Its primary focus is on developing potential first-in-class oral targeted therapy-based peptide drugs that work by blocking biological pathways that are currently targeted by marketed injectable antibody drugs. Protagonist's initial lead peptide product candidates, PTG-100 and PTG-200, are based on this approach, and the company believes these candidates have the potential to transform the existing treatment paradigm for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), consisting primarily of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.

PTG-100, a potential first-in-class oral peptide alpha-4-beta-7 integrin antagonist, is currently in a global Phase 2b clinical trial for treatment of moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis.  PTG-200, a first-in-class oral Interleukin-23 receptor antagonist for potential treatment of IBD, initially Crohn's disease, is currently in pre-clinical development and is expected to enter a Phase 1 clinical study in the second half of 2017. The company recently announced it has entered into a worldwide collaboration with Janssen Biotech to co-develop and commercialize PTG-200 for all indications, including IBD.

In addition to PTG-100 and PTG-200, the company is developing an injectable hepcidin mimetic PTG-300 as a potential orphan drug for the treatment of rare diseases such as beta-thalassemia.  PTG-300 is currently being studied in a Phase 1 clinical trial.

Protagonist is headquartered in Newark, California with its pre-clinical and clinical staff in California, and discovery operations both in California and in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. For further information, please visit http://www.protagonist-inc.com.

SOURCE Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc.