Trevena Appoints Roberto Cuca as Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., Sept. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Trevena, Inc., (Trevena) a clinical stage pharmaceutical company and a leader in the discovery and development of G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) biased ligands, today announced the appointment of Roberto Cuca as senior vice president and chief financial officer.

"We are delighted to have Roberto join Trevena at this pivotal juncture in the company's development," said Maxine Gowen, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Trevena. "Roberto's diverse experience in effectively transitioning both private and public healthcare companies through phases of rapid growth will be invaluable in assisting Trevena through its corporate and strategic evolution."

Mr. Cuca brings to Trevena nearly 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Most recently, he served as Treasurer and Senior Vice President, Finance at Endo Health Solutions Inc., a specialty healthcare company. Before that, he was Director, Corporate and Business Development, at moksha8 Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pharmaceutical company focused on emerging markets. Mr. Cuca also worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co. as an equity analyst covering U.S. pharmaceutical companies. He received an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania, a J.D. from Cornell Law School, an A.B. from Princeton University and he is a CFA charterholder.

"I am excited to join Trevena and work with its exceptional team at a time of such great promise," said Mr. Cuca. "The company has made significant progress in advancing its compounds into the clinic, collaborating with world-class global pharmaceutical companies and successfully securing financing to support the development of its clinical programs.  I look forward to helping the company progress towards its next phase of development."

About Biased Ligands
GPCRs are the targets of at least one-third of modern medicinal products, and remain the predominant class of targets under clinical evaluation.  However, traditional ligands either turn on, or turn off, all of the signaling pathways engaged by a particular receptor, which can result in efficacy limitations or undesirable adverse effects. Trevena's expertise lies in engineering "biased ligands" that activate only the beneficial signaling pathways downstream of a GPCR to unlock new biology and avoid drug adverse effects.

About Trevena
Trevena, Inc. is a privately held, clinical stage pharmaceutical company that has built a pipeline of biased GPCR ligands to address unmet medical needs in cardiovascular, pain and other CNS conditions.  The company's drug discovery technology is based on extensive research from the laboratory of Nobel Prize winning scientist Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D. of Duke University Medical Center. The lead drug in Trevena's portfolio, TRV027, is a first-in-class agent in Phase 2 testing for the treatment of acute heart failure. TRV027 is being developed by Trevena under a recently announced collaborative licensing option agreement with Forest Laboratories Inc. (NYSE: FRX). Trevena's pipeline also includes a clinical stage mu-opioid biased ligand, TRV130, in development for post-operative pain, a pre-clinical program for chronic pain, and discovery-stage programs for pain and Parkinson's disease. Trevena is based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and is backed by Alta Partners, Healthcare Ventures, NEA, Polaris, Forest Holdings and Yasuda Enterprise Development Company.  For more information about the company, please visit www.trevenainc.com.

For more information, please contact:
Ros Deegan, VP Business Development, Trevena Inc., 610-354-8840 x225 (Corporate)
Kimberly Minarovich, Christensen, 917-533-3268 (Media)

SOURCE Trevena, Inc.