MILLBROOK, N.Y., July 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Egenix, Inc. -- Donald Fresne, CEO of Egenix, announced that the board approved the appointment of Nils Bergenhem, PhD as President and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Bergenhem brings 16 years of drug development experience to the company and has successfully built and maintained international drug-discovery collaborations between equally-sized companies, as well as between biotech and major pharmaceutical companies. Two out of three collaborations produced drug candidates moving into clinical development. He was Vice President of Research & Development, and Chief Scientific Officer at CPEX Pharmaceuticals, Inc, an emerging specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the development, licensing and commercialization of pharmaceutical products prior to its sale early this year. He previously held leadership positions at Escoublac, Inc, Adipogenix, Inc, the Institute for Diabetes Discovery, and OSI Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Bergenhem received his B.S. in Chemistry at Linkoping University and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Umea University in Sweden.
"Egenix approach to treating cancer has the potential to prevent uncontrolled cancerous cell growth, while not affecting normally growing cells," said Nils Bergenhem. "I am very excited to join Egenix, and help drive these programs forward to clinical application."
About Egenix, Inc:
Egenix is a privately held, New York-based biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative cancer therapeutics. The company's therapeutic platform technology consists of small molecule drugs applicable for the treatment and prevention of a broad spectrum of cancers. Our lead drug candidates inhibit the "translation initiation factors" eIF4E and eIF2a, specifically blocking production of multiple cancer promoting proteins and promoting apoptosis (programmed cell death) and upregulation of tumor suppressor genes. The company licensed this technology from Harvard Medical School in 2007. eIF4E and eIF2a are attractive cancer therapeutic targets because every function necessary for cancer growth and metastasis is influenced or mediated by a gene product that is regulated by these translation initiation factors. Data from human cancer xenograft studies using two of our lead compounds tested against breast cancer and melanoma demonstrated 100% tumor inhibition and 20% to 30% tumor reduction. For more information visit www.egenixinc.com.
SOURCE Egenix, Inc.