Ensemble Appoints Ted Hibben as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 15, 2010 - Ensemble Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing Ensemblins, a novel class of therapeutics; small molecules with the power of biologics, today announced that Ted Hibben has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. In this role, Ted will focus on leading Ensemble's business development efforts and play a key part in strategic planning initiatives. Prior to joining Ensemble, Mr. Hibben held senior corporate management positions at Cequent Pharmaceuticals (now a part of Marina Biotech) and Coley Pharmaceutical Group (acquired by Pfizer).
"We are very pleased to welcome Ted as his deep expertise and nearly twenty years of biotech corporate development experience will be a great asset to Ensemble," said Michael D. Taylor, Ph.D., President and CEO of Ensemble Therapeutics. "Ted's extensive experience in business and corporate development, strategy, financing and M&A will be critical to our success as we continue to execute on our strategy to develop Ensemblins through partnerships with pharmaceutical companies as well as through our own internal product development programs."
Most recently, Mr. Hibben served as Chief Business Officer of Cequent Pharmaceuticals, a company developing therapeutics based on RNAi, where he played a key role in Cequent's $46 million merger with MDRNA, Inc. (now Marina Biotech). Prior to Cequent, he was Vice President, Business Development and Alliance Management at Coley Pharmaceutical Group where he sourced and managed nine development collaborations and led the process to sell Coley to Pfizer for $233 million in 2008. Earlier, Ted was integral to advancing Centagenetix's merger with Elixir, Ontogeny's merger with Creative BioMolecules to form Curis, and Marathon Biopharmaceutical's acquisition by Ligand. Ted earned his M.B.A. from Harvard University and his A.B. from Dartmouth College.
About Ensemblins
EnsemblinsTM are a new class of synthetic macrocycles developed by Ensemble using its proprietary chemistry platforms, including DNA-Programmed ChemistryTM. Macrocyclic rings are found in many natural product-based drugs and bestow favorable pharmaceutical properties and powerful protein surface binding properties upon such drugs. Thus, macrocycles are uniquely suited to address many protein targets that cannot be modulated effectively by traditional small molecule pharmaceutical compounds. Macrocycles have been challenging to synthesize in large numbers and this has constrained their wider use in the industry. Ensemble has produced larger collections of macrocyclic drug candidates than any previously synthesized in the pharmaceutical industry.
About Ensemble Therapeutics
Based in Cambridge, MA, Ensemble Therapeutics is deploying its proprietary chemistry platforms to develop a novel class of therapeutics known as "Ensemblins". Ensemble is the exclusive worldwide licensee from Harvard University of its patents covering DNA-Programmed Chemistry.
Ensemble is pursuing a proprietary drug pipeline and also collaborations with pharmaceutical partners. Ensemble has two drug discovery alliances with Bristol-Myers Squibb (April 2009) and Pfizer (January 2010). Ensemble's lead proprietary programs are in the inflammatory disease field. For more information, visit: www.ensembletx.com.
Contact: The Yates Network
Gina Nugent, 617-460-3579