Ray Hill joins Covagen’s Board of Directors
Zurich, Switzerland, April 28, 2009
Covagen has announced today the appointment of Prof. Raymond G. Hill (B.Pharm., Ph.D., DSc (Hon), FMedSci) as member of its Board of Directors.
Ray Hill is currently Visiting Professor of Pharmacology and Honorary Business Development Advisor at the Imperial College in London. In addition, he is Non-Executive Director of Addex (CH), Orexo AB (SE), and Lectus Therapeutics Ltd (UK).
As Executive Director, Licensing and External Research, Europe, between February 2002 and his retirement from Merck at the end of April 2008, Dr. Hill headed a new licensing group within Merck/MSD Research Laboratories aimed at establishing mutually beneficial relationships with European pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as academic institutions across all therapeutic areas and platform technologies. Prior to this he was Executive Director, Pharmacology at the Neuroscience Research Centre engaged in drug discovery for neuroscience indications. He chaired the MRL Analgesia Task Force, coordinating basic research worldwide aimed at new therapies for pain and headache, and between 1997 and 2002 he had oversight responsibility for neuroscience research at the Banyu Research Labs in Tsukuba, making frequent visits to Japan. At Merck he chaired a number of discovery project teams including those responsible for the marketed products Maxalt® (for migraine) and Emend® (for chemotherapy induced vomiting and nausea).
Prof. Hill received his academic training at the University of London. He was a lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Bristol School of Medicine from 1974 to 1983 and supervisor in Pharmacology at Downing College, University of Cambridge from 1983 to 1988. He joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1983 as Head of Biology and founder member of the Parke Davis Research Unit at Cambridge, working on projects related to peptide function and pain perception. In 1988, he joined Smith, Kline and French (UK) as Group Director, Pharmacology and in 1990 moved to Merck. He serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals, has been a Council Member of the British Pain Society and is currently President Elect and chairman of the Executive Committee of the British Pharmacological Society. Between 1996 and 2003 he was a member of the ABPI R&D committee and a member of the EFPIA Research Directors Group until 2008. He is Visiting Industrial Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Bristol, Visiting Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Surrey and in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Strathclyde University. He is a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and serves on a Fellowship Committee for the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Prof. Hill has published more than 200 peer reviewed papers on the pharmacology of opioids and other analgesic drugs and on the role of substance P, CGRP, bradykinin and other peptides in emesis, nociception and the control of food intake. He is co-author (with J.A. Alexander) of a book on Postoperative Pain Control.
“We are very pleased that Ray Hill has accepted to join Covagen’s Board of Directors”, said Julian Bertschinger, Chief Executive Officer of Covagen. “Ray Hill brings along both very valuable industrial and scientific experience that will be key to bringing our lead Fynomers to clinical development. His dedication and knowledge will contribute significantly to the exploitation of the full business potential of Covagen’s drug discovery platform. We are keen on working with him.”
Ray Hill said: “This is an exciting time to be joining the Board of Covagen as we move forward to evaluation of the therapeutic potential of the Fynomers.”
For further details, please contact:
Covagen AG
Dr. Julian Bertschinger, CEO
Tel: +41 (0) 44 635 60 33
julian.bertschinger@covagen.com
About Covagen: Covagen develops next generation protein drugs for the treatment of inflammatory diseases and cancer by using its proprietary protein engineering technology, which has been developed at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). Covagen's innovative platform comprises the recently developed Covalent DNA Display technology and a novel single domain protein scaffold, which - in analogy to antibodies - can be engineered to yield high affinity binding proteins called Fynomers that can be used for therapeutic applications. In addition, the modular structure of Covagen's Fynomers and its favorable biophysical properties potentially allow for treatment modalities that are difficult or impossible to be exploited with antibodies.