Protagonist Therapeutics Names William A. Hodder as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development

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Dec 18, 2014, 08:35 ET

MILPITAS, Calif., Dec. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. today announced the appointment of William A. Hodder as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development. Mr. Hodder joins the company with over 28 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, including 16 years as a successful business development executive.

"Bill Hodder has spent many years leading business development, fund-raising, out-licensing and marketing activities for both private companies and major public firms, including an executive management role at FibroGen, Inc.," said Dinesh V. Patel, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Protagonist Therapeutics. "His outstanding expertise in building businesses and R&D partnerships will be critical as Protagonist progresses its pipeline of oral peptide therapeutics for gastrointestinal diseases from pre-clinical to clinical development and ultimately to the marketplace."

Mr. Hodder joins Protagonist from his own consulting practice, where he has assisted both private and public biotech companies with fundraising, business development and marketing activities. From 2001 to 2010, he was employed by FibroGen Inc. in a series of increasingly responsible business development roles, ultimately serving as Vice President, Business Development, corporate officer and a member of the executive management team. Prior to FibroGen, Mr. Hodder was employed by Aradigm Corporation as Director of Business Development and Marketing and Director of Marketing, Respiratory Products. His earlier career included product management, marketing and sales roles at Penederm Incorporated, Ciba-Geigy Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Marion Laboratories. He holds an MBA degree from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

About Protagonist Therapeutics

Protagonist Therapeutics is a U.S.-incorporated biotechnology company engaged in the discovery and development of 'orally stable peptides' for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and other gastrointestinal diseases and disorders. The company has an innovative and proprietary technology platform that enables it to develop potent and orally stable peptides against protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets that are undruggable by small molecules and therefore have historically been approached only by 'injectable biologics'. Oral peptides may lead to a superior and safer choice for IBD patients, physicians, and payers by virtue of their better convenience & compliance, favorable cost of goods, and potentially enhanced safety & efficacy in comparison to the injectable antibodies. The company is pursuing new chemical entities (NCEs) for the 'oral targeted therapy' based treatment of IBD. The first NCE is the alpha-4-beta-7 integrin-specific oral peptide antagonist PTG-100 currently in IND-enabling studies and the second is an oral IL-23 receptor antagonist undergoing preclinical lead optimization.

Protagonist is a spin-out of University of Queensland's Institute of Molecular Biosciences (IMB) and is headquartered in Milpitas, California USA and with discovery operations both in California and in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. For further information, please visit http://www.protagonist-inc.com.

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SOURCE Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc.