Intarcia Announces Expanded Appointment for Kurt Graves as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

HAYWARD, Calif., April 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc. today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Kurt Graves to the position of Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately.  Mr. Graves has been the Executive Chairman of the Board since August 2010 and Acting CEO since October 2011, bringing Intarcia more than 20 years of leadership and global experience in building and growing top-performing pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.  The Company today also announced its intention to locate its new corporate headquarters in the Boston, Massachusetts area, while keeping its early development capabilities and state-of-the-art manufacturing site in Hayward, California. 

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"Intarcia has proven itself an innovative and powerful force capable of creating game-changing medicines for serious diseases.  The Board believes that Intarcia's full potential will be realized under the continued direct leadership and ongoing vision of Kurt Graves," said Director Bryan Roberts, Partner at Venrock.  "Kurt's strategic insights across the business and his passion to bring new medicines to patients has lifted the Company to a whole new level.  We believe his permanent appointment as CEO, combined with the Company's recent announcements, form a strong and promising future for the Company.  In addition, our concurrent plan to locate Intarcia's headquarters in the Boston area reveals our level of commitment to this forward leadership."

Mr. Graves is credited by the Board for seeing major new opportunities early on at Intarcia and for reshaping a bold vision and strategic direction for the Company and its lead candidate for diabetes.  Over the past few years, he has also been working to strengthen the organization and put in place the building blocks, talent and strategic collaborations to marshal the full set of global opportunities for the Company.  His years of developing and successfully launching several of the biggest medicines in the industry while in senior roles at Merck, Astra, Novartis and Vertex helped coalesce nearly a decade of innovation at Intarcia into a forward-looking and highly differentiated global Phase 3 program for ITCA 650, the Company's transformational once-yearly investigational treatment for type 2 diabetes.  

To successfully execute the global program designed to evaluate and demonstrate the superiority of ITCA 650 versus current standards of care, Mr. Graves and the team recently closed a groundbreaking deal with Quintiles, through which Quintiles is also making strategic investments in the Company and the product candidate itself.  The Company is also in the final stages of forming a second major deal around ITCA 650 with a leading global pharmaceutical company.  The collaboration is intended to create a powerful three-way global alliance to maximize the commercial potential of ITCA 650 in one of the largest and fastest growing therapeutic markets in the world.  A new Chief Medical Officer (CMO) with deep pharmaceutical and diabetes drug development experience, Michelle Baron, MD, FACE, was just recruited into the Company as well.

Mr. Graves commented on his appointment by thanking the Board and the Company's talented team of professionals who have helped drive the Company's success to date: "Intarcia has always been and continues to be an evolving story of innovation with immense potential.  It is exciting and an honor for me to be part of what turns this Company's great promise into game-changing medicines for patients and tremendous value creation for our shareholders.  Nowhere is this potential more obvious than in type 2 diabetes, where we have what we believe to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help the hundreds of millions of patients worldwide challenged by this devastating disease.  I am also looking forward to building on our innovative drug delivery platforms and our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in California while we open our new headquarters in the Boston area, a region with deep resources and unparalleled innovation networks to support a growing life science company."

About ITCA 650
ITCA 650 (DUROS^® continuous subcutaneous delivery of exenatide) is being developed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The investigational therapy comprises Intarcia's DUROS delivery device, a matchstick-size, miniature osmotic pump that is inserted subcutaneously to provide continuous and consistent drug therapy, and the company's proprietary formulation technology, which maintains stability of therapeutic proteins and peptides at human body temperatures for extended periods of time. The combined technologies can deliver up to a full year of injection-free therapy from a single ITCA 650 placement.

Data from Intarcia's ITCA 650 Phase 2 program have demonstrated significant and sustained reductions in HbA1c and body weight over 48 weeks of treatment with a marked reduction in the GI adverse events typically associated with the self-injection products in this class. ITCA 650 is an investigational new therapy and is not currently approved by any regulatory authority. Exenatide, the active agent in ITCA 650, is a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist currently marketed globally as a twice-daily and once-weekly self-injection therapy for type 2 diabetes. Upon approval, ITCA 650 would represent the first injection-free GLP-1 therapy that can deliver up to a full year of treatment from a single placement. Intarcia's robust intellectual property portfolio protects ITCA 650 through 2027.

About Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc.
Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company developing therapies to enhance treatment outcomes by improving the efficacy, tolerability and long-term control and compliance profile of important medicines for serious diseases. Its proprietary technology platforms can transform would-be injectable medicines into just once or twice yearly medicines with enhanced pharmacokinetics, virtually ensured compliance, and the peace of mind related to continuous delivery of the target therapeutic benefits.  Intarcia's innovations and competitive advantages are derived by its ability to stabilize proteins, peptides and antibody fragments at above-body temperatures for long-periods of time while delivering them in a constant and consistent manner for a year or more via a very small osmotic mini-pump drug delivery technology. Intarcia is initiating a global Phase 3 development program for type 2 diabetes and has additional programs ongoing for weight regulation to control obesity. For more information, please visit www.intarcia.com.

Intarcia and its logo are registered trademarks of Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc. DUROS is a registered trademark of ALZA Corporation licensed to Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc. in a broad set of therapeutic fields.

SOURCE Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc.