Synta Names Alan C. Rigby, Ph.D. Chief Scientific Officer

LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp. (NASDAQ: SNTA) today announced the appointment of Alan C. Rigby, Ph.D., as the Company's Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Rigby brings over 20 years of academic and industry experience in the areas of structural and computational biology, drug discovery, and translational research of small and large molecules in oncology. Most recently, Dr. Rigby served as Vice President, Global Antibody Drug Conjugate Biology, Oncology Research, for Eli Lilly and Company at their New York site.

"Hsp90 is a fundamental component of tumor biology and a promising target with profound potential for affecting the growth and development of many cancers"
"Dr. Rigby is an accomplished scientist and leader whose insights and expertise will be important as we explore ganetespib combinations with emerging agents and continue our biomarker research effort. In addition, Alan will be instrumental in our efforts to leverage the recent findings of ganetespib enhancing the immune response to tumors and to advance the novel compounds emerging from our Hsp90 inhibitor Drug Conjugate (HDC) discovery platform," said Chen Schor, President and Chief Executive Officer of Synta. "Through his leadership at Lilly, Alan has direct experience guiding the discovery and development of several drug conjugate candidates for multiple oncology indications. Alan also brings a strong record of establishing translational collaborations within the academic medical community to accelerate the development of promising cancer therapies. We expect this experience will be important as we continue to develop a broad and robust portfolio of oncology therapeutics through relationship-based collaborations. We welcome Dr. Rigby to the team and look forward to his contributions."

"Hsp90 is a fundamental component of tumor biology and a promising target with profound potential for affecting the growth and development of many cancers," Dr. Rigby stated. "I look forward to contributing to the development of ganetespib, including efforts to develop a deeper understanding of the biological rationale behind novel ganetespib combination approaches and the genetic signatures driving its anti-cancer activity. Similarly, I look forward to contributing to the advancement of Synta's HDC clinical candidates, including STA-12-8666, for which an IND is expected in the first quarter of next year. To date this molecule has provided robust and durable anti-tumor activity in difficult to treat in vivo cancer models."

Dr. Rigby joined Eli Lilly and Company in 2010. Among his responsibilities there, he served as the Global Vice President of Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) Biology and was responsible for leading the Eli Lilly-ImmunoGen ADC collaboration, advancing novel therapeutics within the Lilly Oncology Pipeline. Dr. Rigby was also responsible for establishing and executing on translational collaborations with academic medical centers within greater New York City.

Prior to joining Eli Lilly in 2010, Alan was the Principal Investigator of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded independent academic laboratory and the Director of the Drug Discovery and Target Validation Program within the Center for Vascular Biology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rigby has served and continues to serve on national and international granting councils including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Canadian Foundation for Innovation and Genome Quebec's PRIVAC. He is the North American Editor for Current Computer Aided Drug Discovery and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Future Medicinal Chemistry. He has published more than 50 scientific papers, a book chapter and has more than 10 patents that have published or are pending. Dr. Rigby holds an Honors BSc. in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

About Synta Pharmaceuticals

Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp. is an innovative, agile biopharmaceutical company focused on research, development and commercialization of novel oncology medicines that have the potential to change the lives of cancer patients. Synta's lead oncology drug candidate, ganetespib, a novel heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) inhibitor, is currently being evaluated in several clinical trials including the pivotal GALAXY-2 Phase 3 trial in non-small cell lung cancer. Building on its extensive expertise in the science of Hsp90, Synta also has a novel proprietary Hsp90 inhibitor Drug Conjugate (HDC) small molecule drug development program. IND enabling studies have commenced for the first clinical candidate from the HDC program, STA-12-8666, and preclinical evaluation of additional HDC candidates is ongoing. For more information, please visit www.syntapharma.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This media release may contain forward-looking statements about Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp. Such forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "will", "would", "should", "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "plans", "believes", "may", "estimates", "predicts", "projects", or similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements, including statements relating to the promise of Hsp90 as an oncology therapeutic target, the development of ganetespib biomarkers and combinations, the potential of leveraging recent findings of ganetespib enhancing the immune response to tumors, the emergence and advancement of novel compounds from the HDC drug discovery platform, the development of a broad and robust portfolio of oncology therapeutics through relationship-based collaborations, the efforts to develop a deeper understanding of the biological rationale behind ganetespib combination approaches and the genetic signatures driving its anti-cancer activity and the timing of an IND submission for STA-12-8666, reflect Synta's current views with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including those described in "Risk Factors" of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Synta undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

Contacts

Investors:
Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp.
Daniel Cole, 781-541-7250
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Argot Partners
Andrea Rabney, 212-600-1494
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Media:
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