Phylogica appoints von Roy as chairman

Perth-based drug discovery company, Phylogica Ltd, has announced the appointment of former president of pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myer Squibb (Europe), Aki von Roy, as the company's executive chairman.

Mr von Roy, who has served as a non-executive chair of Phylogica since the company listed, will take on executive management responsibility when incumbent chief executive Dr Stewart Washer leaves Phylogica at the end of the month.

Fellow board member Harry Karelis, managing director of Titan Bioventures, has been appointed deputy chairman to complement the role of Mr von Roy.

Mr von Roy said the board had made a decision to discontinue recruitment activities for a new CEO because of strategic opportunities on the horizon that will determine Phylogica's future direction.

"We are confident that we are in the right space with the right technology. The power of our drug development platform is apparent by the number of collaborations Phylogica has forged with world-leading groups in the sector," Mr von Roy said.

"Our focus in every deal that we have done is to bring together another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that will make up the comprehensive data set required by the pharmaceutical industry that acquires these technologies."

In the past year, similar platform companies such as Avidia (acquired by Amgen in February 2007 for US$380 million) and Adnexus (acquired by BMS in September 2007 for $US430 million) have been acquired at the pre-clinical or phase 1 trial stage.

Phylogica owns a novel suite of intellectual property around its proprietary Phylomer® technology which can be used to not only discover peptide-based drugs but also as a tool for the pharmaceutical industry to validate disease targets of interest.

Phylogica said it had demonstrated that its technology had the ability to generate potential drug leads at far higher efficiencies than traditional techniques and had validated these leads in several preclinical models of disease.