Gavin Jelic-Masterton Appointed as CEO of FINOX Biotech
7/1/2013 7:15:09 AM
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FINOX Biotech (Finox AG) announced today that it has appointed Gavin Jelic-Masterton as CEO.
Mr Jelic-Masterton, previously the company's Senior Vice-President of Marketing & Commercial Operations, joined FINOX Biotech in February 2013 and has more than 15 years experience in pharmaceutical and biotech marketing and sales.
FINOX Biotech submitted their application for Marketing Authorisation Application (MAA) for its biosimilar recombinant Follicle Stimulating Hormone (r-FSH) BEMFOLA® to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on October 30th 2012 and are therefore entering into a new phase in the company's history – a phase that requires strong leadership with experience in the marketing and commercialisation of fertility hormones. Gavin Jelic-Masterton has been responsible for local and global marketing for fertility hormones for two of the world's leading manufacturers of gonadatrophins since 2000 – first at Merck Serono and latterly at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, where he held positions of increasing seniority.
Dr. h.c. Willy Michel, President of the Board of FINOX Biotech commented, 'Mr Jelic-Masterton has a proven track record in marketing and selling fertility hormones and he is the right person to lead the company from the development phase into the commercialisation phase and to create optimum value for the shareholders and investors in the company. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing CEO, Mr Anjan Selz who decided to leave the company to undertake new challenges in Australia.'
About BEMFOLA®
BEMFOLA® (development code "AFOLIA") is a new "biosimilar" medicine that was produced using recombinant DNA technology. Both BEMFOLA® and the reference product Gonal-f® are formulations of the naturally occurring hormone FSH, which plays a key role in human reproduction. BEMFOLA® is the result of a targeted drug development process aimed to replicate as closely as possible the reference product. BEMFOLA® has a number of key beneficial characteristics. i.e. equivalent clinical efficacy and safety vs. Gonal-f®, but using an innovative and award winning injector device. The BEMFOLA® injector pen is a single-use, one-a-day disposable device, which is smaller, more discreet and allows the patient to inject using only the minimal numbers of steps – and has therefore been designed to increase patient confidence by limiting the number of potential errors.
About BEMFOLA® in other clinical development programs FINOX Biotech has agreed with the US-FDA via a Special Protocol Assessment to conduct a pivotal phase III study (FIN3002) for registration of BEMFOLA® (AFOLIA) in the USA. A US IND was filed and the FIN3002 study is in progress.
About FINOX Biotech
FINOX Biotech (FINOX AG) is a biopharmaceutical company with its corporate headquarters in Burgdorf, Switzerland. Finox' first product will be BEMFOLA®, a biosimilar r-FSH of Gonal-f®. FINOX Biotech was founded in 2007 with a vision to become a leading company in the field of fertility therapies, by combining high quality Swiss medicines with innovative and award winning delivery devices.
For further information please visit www.finox.ch or contact our CEO, Gavin Jelic-Masterton ([email protected] / +41 79 444 4110) FINOX Biotech / Technikumstrasse 2 / 3401 Burgdorf / Switzerland