Marseille, May 30, 2006 - Trophos SA, a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the discovery and development of drugs for neurodegenerative diseases, announced today the appointment of Jacques Essinger, PhD, as President of its Supervisory Board. Dr Essinger has over 20 years of experience in the biomedical industry and presently sits on the Boards of several private and public-quoted companies.
 

Dr Essinger, 45, brings Trophos a wealth of experience in developing biomedical companies on both sides of the Atlantic. He was CEO at Modex Therapeutics, a company focusing on tissue repair, regeneration and replacement. After Dr Essinger took it through an IPO and two M&A transactions, it became Isotis Orthobiology, a public company focussing on bone substitute, listed on the Zurich, Amsterdam and Toronto stock exchanges. He holds a MS degree in Physics and a PhD degree in Biomechanics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland.
 

"Trophos has two exciting mature programs: ALS, which, after a positive Phase II/III, could become a serious in-house product with potential sales in excess of USD500M, and neuropathic pain, which, following a Phase IIa, would be a strong licensing opportunity," said Dr Essinger. "I am pleased to join the Trophos Supervisory Board and to be working with Trophos CEO Antoine Béret in setting the strategy going forward and securing the appropriate financing."
 

"Jacques has considerable experience establishing and developing companies in both Europe and the USA and his presence on the board will be of great value to the Company as we progress our clinical phase pipeline and continue to build the company towards its objective of becoming a specialty biopharmaceutical company," said Antoine Béret, CEO at Trophos. "It is a pleasure to welcome Jacques to the role of President of the Supervisory Board."
 

Béret added: "We are particularly excited that TRO19622, the lead molecule discovered using our innovative phenotypic screening platform, has successfully completed Phase I clinical studies thereby allowing us to proceed rapidly into clinical trials of efficacy in both neuropathic pain and ALS patients."
 

About Trophos: www.trophos.com

Trophos is a biopharmaceutical company developing drugs to treat neurodegenerative diseases. These are severely debilitating, often fatal, disorders with few effective drugs and tremendous unmet medical needs. Trophos has pioneered an innovative phenotypic screening platform which has enabled it to develop a proprietary portfolio of products in preclinical and clinical phases of development. The company is focusing its efforts on four therapeutic domains: neuropathic pain, the motoneuron diseases (ALS & SMA), Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
 

The company is based in Marseille, France and currently has 35 employees.