Evolva appoints Jessica Mann as Chief Medical Officer

Basel, Switzerland, 29 October 2009 – Evolva SA, a Swiss headquartered international biotech company has expanded its management team by appointing Jessica Mann as Chief Medical Officer. She has supported Evolva as an advisor over the last year and has been actively involved in the clinical development of Evolva’s compound portfolio in this period.

Jessica Mann, MD, PhD has long-standing experience in drug development; she was previously Medical Director and a member of the management group of Speedel AG (sold to Novartis for USD 880 million in 2008) and prior to that worked at Roche, where she was a Senior Clinical and Licensing Liaison, and Novartis, where she was International Clinical Leader for DiovanTM (Novartis’ top selling drug). Before joining Novartis she was a Lecturer in Cardiovascular Pathology at St George’s Hospital Medical School in London. Jessica has an MD from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD from the University of London.

“We are very pleased to have Jessica in our management team,” commented Neil Goldsmith, CEO of Evolva. “As Scientific Advisor over the last year, Jessica has already significantly contributed to our compound development. Her impressive experience in bringing drugs through the clinic to market, plus her mixture of experience from both large pharmaceutical companies and successful biotechs, will help us to achieve our ambitious drug development goals. Jessica complements our executive team perfectly.”

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 discovery and pre-clinical partnerships which in 2008 generated revenues of about CHF 12 million. Evolva also has an attractive pipeline of drug candidates deriving from this approach – one compound (for renal and cardiovascular diseases) entered Phase I beginning of 2009, and two others (an anti-fungal and an anti-viral) are expected to enter Phase I in 2010. 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

Jakob D. Hansen, CFO
jakobdh@evolva.com
Phone: +41 61 485 20 34
Fax: +41 61 485 20 01