Pepscan Appoints new Chief Business Officer

LELYSTAD, The Netherlands, April 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Pepscan Therapeutics, the Dutch biotech company focusing on protein mimicry for the discovery of therapeutics peptides and antibodies, announced today the appointment of Michiel Lodder as Chief Business Officer. Dr. Lodder joins Pepscan from Octoplus, where he held the position of Senior Manager Business Development, responsible for licensing, partnering, and alliance management activities.

"We are delighted to bring Michiel Lodder on board to help us exploit the enormous potential of Pepscan's pioneering CLIPS platform for the discovery and development of therapeutic peptides and antibodies," said Wim Mol, CEO of Pepscan. "Pepscan has recently established a number of research collaboration and licensing agreements with major pharma and biotech companies, and Michiel's business savvy and deal-making experience make him ideal to further expand our partnership base."

"I'm very excited to join the company at this pivotal stage," stated Lodder. "The potential of the CLIPS technology to significantly improve therapeutic peptide leads or generate antibodies against intractable targets such as GPCR's and ion channels is far-reaching. Through successful partnering Pepscan can play an important role in the advancement of innovative peptide and antibody therapeutics."

Michiel Lodder holds a M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Leiden, and a PhD in Bio-Organic Chemistry from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. Throughout his career in corporate business development, he contributed or delivered numerous strategic partnerships and license deals encompassing technology platform and product deals. In his role as Director Business Development, North America he was responsible for the establishment and management of OctoPlus Inc., located in Cambridge, MA, USA.

About Pepscan

Pepscan is a privately held company based in Lelystad, The Netherlands. Pepscan is using its proprietary high throughput CLIPS protein mimicking technology for the development of novel constrained therapeutic peptides and immunogens. Besides its pipeline of proprietary anti- GPCR monoclonal antibody products Pepscan has various ongoing collaborations with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies to develop novel therapeutics based on the proprietary CLIPS technology.

About CLIPS technology

CLIPS (Chemical LInkage of Peptides onto Scaffolds) is a technology to present one or more peptides in a structurally constrained configuration. These molecules behave as functional mimics of complex protein domains. CLIPS peptides have been used in antibody and vaccine programs to create superior immunogens in the generation of antibodies against disease relevant protein targets. This is especially valuable in the case of proteins that are inaccessible as recombinant proteins, such as GPCRs.

http://www.pepscan.com

SOURCE Pepscan Therapeutics BV