Affinium Pharmaceuticals announces senior appointments

Toronto, ON — February 25, 2003 — Guided drug discovery company, Affinium Pharmaceuticals, has appointed new senior directors in chemistry and structural biology, and new roles for existing senior executives.

Dr Klaus Fiebig is appointed senior director, structural biology, with overall responsibility for leading and enhancing Affinium’s team efforts in NMR and X-ray crystallography. Dr. Fiebig earned his PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of California, San Francisco and his undergraduate degrees in Physics from the Technical University, Munich, Germany. He completed postdoctoral work at the Oxford Centre for Molecular Science, University of Oxford, and Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, and was the recipient of postdoctoral fellowships from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr Fiebig was most recently CEO and co-founder of MR Pharm, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

Dr Henry Pauls is appointed senior director, medicinal chemistry, with responsibility for expanding Affinium’s medicinal chemistry for drug discovery programs both internal to the company, and as part of strategic alliances. Dr Pauls holds his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from Duke University, and his undergraduate degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Waterloo. He is the author of more than 35 refereed publications and co-inventor of more than 15 patents.

Dr Pauls served as a research scientist at Allelix Biopharmaceuticals of Mississauga before joining Rhone-Poulenc Rorer as senior research scientist, and subsequently section manager in cardiovascular chemistry. Prior to joining Affinium, Dr Pauls was chemistry team leader with Aventis Pharma, where he was responsible for leading project teams in asthma and inflammation therapies. Dr Pauls’ work has resulted in the identification of several development compounds and a clinical candidate.

In addition to these new appointments, Affinium has recognized the contributions of existing executives through promotions and changes in title to reflect the scope of their ongoing contributions. Dr Molly B Schmid becomes senior vice president, pre-clinical programs, assuming responsibility for Affinium’s pre-clinical drug activities. Dr Raymond Hui is appointed vice president, engineering and process improvement, reflecting his role in the scientific management of the company.

Affinium Pharmaceuticals is a structure guided drug discovery company, engaged in its own internal small molecule programs. Its integrated drug discovery process is designed for rapid advancement of small molecule programs from gene to clinic, and it says its processes enable high throughput target production, determination of target function, and visualization of target structure with bound hits and leads to accelerate chemistry in the discovery of new medicines.