Evolva Appoints Jutta Heim as Chief Technology Officer
Basel, Switzerland, 27th August 2009 – Evolva SA, a Swiss headquartered international biotech company has expanded its Management team by appointing Jutta Heim as Chief Technology Officer. In her new role, Jutta Heim will lead Evolva’s discovery activities and strengthen the development of our technology platform.
Since 2004, Prof. Jutta Heim served as Chief Scientific Officer at Basilea Pharmaceutica AG, a Swiss biopharmaceutical company, where she had responsibility for all discoveries in the areas of anti-infectives, inflammation and oncology. Before Basilea Jutta worked for 22 years for Ciba-Geigy/Novartis (in Switzerland and the USA), where she was involved in the successful development and launch of anti-thrombotic and fibrinolytic products. She established a molecular genetics department in oncology and became Novartis' Senior Scientific Expert in Molecular Biology and a member of the Research Management Board. Jutta completed her career at Novartis by heading the Novartis Lead Discovery Center with worldwide responsibility. She has published numerous papers in the areas of natural products, recombinant proteins and applied molecular biology. Jutta holds a professorship in Biotechnology at the Biocenter of the University of Basel.
Neil Goldsmith, CEO & Managing Director of Evolva, said: “We are very pleased to have Jutta in our management team. As a Board Member and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board during the last 4 years, she has already contributed significantly to our development. Her decision to join us as an executive, given her experience in implementing cutting edge discovery approaches at both Basilea and Novartis, will bring strong new competencies to Evolva and to our partners. Her appointment will allow Alexandra SantAna Sorensen, one of the founders of Evolva, to focus on the development of our advancing compound portfolio. Jutta will step down from her position as a non-executive board member of Evolva at the next general meeting.”
About Evolva
Evolva uses its genetic chemistry platform to replicate, on an industrial basis, the ability of nature to create small molecules with exquisite “design”. Based on this technology, Evolva has a number of third party discovery and pre-clinical programs. Evolva also has an attractive pipeline of potential pharmaceutical products deriving from this approach – one compound (for renal and arterial thrombosis) entered Phase I beginning of 2009, and two others (an anti-fungal and an anti-viral) are expected to enter Phase I in 2010. Evolva’s group revenues were c. CHF 10 million in 2008. For more information see www.evolva.com.
Contact Details
Neil Goldsmith, CEO
neilg@evolva.com
Phone: +41 61 485 20 05
Fax: +41 61 485 20 01