Jessica Mann to leave Evolva and join Roche

Reinach, Switzerland, 18 June 2010 – Evolva Holding SA (SIX: EVE) today announced that Dr. Jessica Mann will resign as Chief Medical Officer of Evolva as of 31 July 2010 to take up a Senior Development position as Head of Translational Medicine at Hoffman La Roche.

Jessica Mann was clinical advisor of Evolva from February 2008 until October 2009 when she became Chief Medical Officer and she has been instrumental in the planning and implementation of Evolva’s clinical activities during this period. As of 1 August 2010, Dr Mann will become a member of the Clinical Advisory Board of Evolva. At Roche, Dr Mann will lead the team in charge of early clinical development activities for the Metabolic DTA.

Dr Alexandra Sorensen will continue as overall responsible for the combined pre-clinical and clinical activities at Evolva. The company has initiated the recruitment of a new Chief Medical Officer.

Neil Goldsmith, CEO and Managing Director of Evolva Holding SA commented, “ Evolva has benefitted greatly from Jessica’s unique competence and experience in clinical development. While we regret not having Jessica as a full-time team member in future, we appreciate that she has accepted to join our Clinical Advisory Board. ”

-- ends --

Contact Details

Download PDF

• English

About Evolva Holding SA

Evolva's proprietary discovery technology platform uses a “disruptive” technological approach to the creation of novel small compounds that differs sharply from the prevailing synthetic chemistry and protein engineering approaches in the pharmaceutical industry today. Based on this technology, Evolva has a number of discovery and pre-clinical partnerships which in 2009 generated revenues of CHF 18.9 million. Evolva also has an attractive pipeline of compounds – one drug candidate (for renal and cardiovascular diseases) entered Phase I at the beginning of 2009, and two others (an anti-fungal and an anti-viral) are in late preclinical stages. Evolva is listed in the main standard of the SIX Swiss Exchange with the ticker EVE. For more information see www.evolva.com.

This press release contains specific forward-looking statements, e.g. statements including terms like believe, assume, expect or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may result in a substantial divergence between the actual results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and those explicitly or implicitly presumed in these statements. Against the background of these uncertainties readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The company assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements or to adapt them to future events or developments.