Vitae Pharmaceuticals Hires Christine Brennan, Ph.D. as Chief Business Officer
FORT WASHINGTON, Pa., Jul 14, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Vitae Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced today the appointment of Dr. Christine Brennan as Chief Business Officer. Dr. Brennan has over 10 years experience in business development and strategy roles of increasing responsibility within the biotech, venture and large pharma segments of the biopharmaceutical industry, accumulating a broad range of experiences identifying and matching high-quality science with strategic need. Most recently, Dr. Brennan served as Executive Director and Head of Strategy and Operations for Strategic Alliances at Novartis' Institutes for BioMedical Research. Prior to Novartis, she worked at Fidelity Biosciences, a private equity venture capital company, and prior to that Dr. Brennan worked in business development for several early-stage biotechnology companies. She holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Dartmouth Medical School and a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of New Hampshire.
"We are very pleased to welcome Christine to Vitae at this stage of our growth. The life sciences industry is tracking on a path of tremendous change, centered around a rapidly increasing link - even co-dependency - between large pharma and biotech. Her successful partnering experiences in each, her proven track record of creating value through collaboration, and her strategic insights and leadership skills will all strongly contribute to Vitae's continued maturation," said Jeffrey Hatfield, CEO of Vitae Pharmaceuticals. "With Vitae's multiple clinical programs, expanding pipeline and highly productive and capital efficient discovery engine, making Vitae a more outward-facing organization became the next critical step in our evolution. I am especially pleased to gain the help of someone as talented and successful as Christine for this important role."
"It's an exciting time to be joining Vitae, which has accomplished great progress towards their goal of creating innovative, best-in-class new medicines," stated Dr. Brennan. "Vitae has built a strong pipeline of programs in a variety of therapeutic categories with high unmet medical need, including multiple clinical stage drug candidates. I am delighted to be a part of the successful team at Vitae and I look forward to helping the Company and its partners - both current and future - achieve their goals together via strategically aligned and value accelerating collaborations."
About Vitae Pharmaceuticals
Vitae Pharmaceuticals is a development-stage biopharmaceutical company building a portfolio of novel, small molecule, best-in-class compounds that address large markets, including chronic kidney disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. Vitae's lead compound, VTP-27999, is a wholly owned, novel, potent and selective renin inhibitor offering the potential for superior renal protection in patients suffering from chronic kidney disease. The compound is advancing through Phase I clinical trials; the Company expects to be in Phase II by the end of 2010.
Vitae is an expert in structure-based drug discovery and combines a proprietary technical platform with the experience and insight of world class scientists to advance best-in-class compounds for high value, hard-to-drug targets. Vitae's proprietary, discovery platform has clear advantages in creating and analyzing novel drug candidates that meet pre-defined physicochemical characteristics. The accuracy and speed of this system has enabled Vitae to solve challenging targets in multiple therapeutic areas -- discovering and advancing attractive compounds in a rapid and highly capital efficient manner. Vitae Pharmaceuticals is financed by leading corporate and venture capital investors; its last venture round was in 2004. Vitae's 45 scientists are located in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. For additional information, please visit the company's website, www.vitaepharma.com.
SOURCE: Vitae Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Burns McClellan on behalf of Vitae
Justin Jackson
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Michelle Szwarcberg (media)
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