I'm none too happy about the implications of the highlighted remark -
March 1, 2001--ValiGen, N.V. announced today the appointment of Bernard E. Bihain, MD, as Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Bihain's expertise in lipids, coupled with his experience in discovering novel targets and drug protein candidates, is a perfect complement to ValiGen's existing breadth of skills and proprietary technologies. Furthermore, Dr. Bihain's appointment reinforces ValiGen's previously stated strategic intent to concentrate its functional genomics business on target identification and in vivo validation primarily in cardiovascular, metabolic disorders and cancer.
``Bernard's experience and drive will provide scientific leadership across our Company, and especially enhance our capabilities in target validation,'' said Douglas Watson, President and CEO of ValiGen. ``Dr. Bihain's expertise and track-record are a superb match for ValiGen's target and therapeutic protein discovery programs in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. This promises to be an even more powerful combination given the wealth of phenotyped data and tissue samples available within ValiGen from its proprietary INFOGEN population databases.''
``I am excited to join ValiGen's unique team of dedicated and outstanding scientists and to be part of a management team that has a clear vision of the importance of the functional genomic approach to the discovery and development of the next generation of human therapeutics,'' Dr. Bihain stated. ``I believe that ValiGen has over the last year assembled a remarkable number of technological assets and has all the ingredients to become the premier target validation company.''
Since 1998, Dr. Bihain has served as vice president of functional genomics at Genset S.A. located in San Diego, CA. Dr. Bihain earned an M.D. from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium and completed his postdoctoral research fellowship at Columbia University in New York.
Dr. Bihain is an author of more than 40 scientific publications, focusing on the pathogenesis of metabolic diseases. Most recently, he co-authored a paper detailing his work on the discovery of a proteolytic cleavage product of ACRP 30, that functions as a Fatty Acid Muscle Oxidation Inducer that causes weight loss in mice without affecting food intake. Famoxin is currently in pre-clinical development at Genset.
``I wish to make it clear that we have the highest respect for Genset and the research work in obesity performed there by Dr. Bihain and his former colleagues,'' commented Stephen Evans-Freke, ValiGen's Chairman. ``As a European-American functional genomics company, we view ourselves as complementary to, rather than competitive with, Genset's declared mission of becoming a drug development organization. To the extent that we can assist Genset to move its development programs forward expeditiously, we will be happy to do so.''
ValiGen, is a privately-held European-American biotechnology company. ValiGen's integrated platform of proprietary technologies provides for a seamless continuum of capability from raw profiling of phenotypes to the identification and in vivo validation of novel patentable targets or therapeutic proteins that control important functions or disease mechanisms. ValiGen partners with pharmaceutical and agricultural companies to derive commercial value from its genomics and Genoplasty(TM) technologies and its population databases, by delivering novel human therapeutics as well as plants with novel traits. ValiGen is a Dutch holding company with operating subsidiaries in Paris, Berlin, and the U.S.... |
