Zurich, Switzerland, 19 January 2005 ESBATech AG, a biotech company specializing in drug discovery and development of therapeutic antibody fragments, today announced the appointment of Thomas Loeser as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Dr. Ulrich Feige as Director of Preclinical Development.

Thomas Loeser previously held the position of CFO at Morphochem AG in which he steered the financial strategy and fundraising, achieving EUR 80 Million of investment in four private equity rounds. He has held various senior level executive management positions in the financial and life science industry over the last 20 years. Thomas holds a degree in economics from Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Ulrich Feige has more than 20 years experience in the preclinical development of products with applications in inflammation and bone metabolism and joins ESBATech from his most recent position as Director of Pharmacology at Amgen Inc, in Thousand Oaks, California where he spent the past 10 years. Previously he was at Ciba-Geigy in Basel, Switzerland. Ulrich has published more than 60 original articles and reviews and is an inventor on several patents.

Commenting on the appointments, CEO Dr. Dominik Escher said: “We are delighted that Thomas and Ulrich have joined ESBATech. Both individuals bring extensive experience and skills that will compliment and further strengthen our management team. Ulrich’s vast experience in preclinical and early clinical phase product development should prove invaluable in pushing our programs into the clinic. Thomas has a proven track record for fund raising and deal making. At ESBATech we are negotiating several deals and have an upcoming financing round ahead of us, we are very confident that Thomas will steer us in a successful direction.”

About ESBATech AG:
 

ESBATech AG focuses on therapeutic applications of its proprietary, fully human antibody fragments. The Company has developed a proprietary procedure for the selection of highly stable, fully human antibody fragments. This selection procedure was successfully applied and identified naturally occurring and highly stable human antibody fragments. These proprietary antibody fragments show no aggregation, which is a problem for many conventional antibody fragments and a cause of immunogenicity. Furthermore, the ESBATech antibody fragments have a much higher solubility, stability and production yield as compared to conventional antibody fragments, thus opening new therapeutic possibilities, while reducing cost of goods of future products. ESBATech applies these proprietary, fully human antibody frameworks in a unique screening procedure allowing the identification of novel antibody fragments against an antigen of choice. In addition the technology can be applied to existing antibody fragments to improve their stability and solubility and hence achieve better expression properties. ESBATech's pipeline comprises programs in research and preclinical development for inflammatory diseases, Alzheimer, and glioblastoma.

In addition, ESBATech employs its cellular technologies for the identification of small molecule inhibitors of kinases and proteases. These technologies are applied in collaborations with pharma and biotech companies.

ESBATech AG is a spin-off company from the Institute of Molecular Biology of the University of Zurich. The Company was founded in September 1998 and has currently 30 employees.

For further information please contact:

Dr Dominik Escher

Chief Executive Officer

ESBATech AG

Wagistrasse 21

CH-8952 Zurich-Schlieren
Switzerland
Tel: +41-1-733 4900

Fax: +41-1-733 4990

e-mail: escher@esbatech.com

www.esbatech.com

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Northbank Communications
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Northbank Communications

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