Appointment of Business Advisor & Board Observer

26 July 2021

Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc

("Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals" or the "Company")

Appointment of Business Advisor & Board Observer

Dr Alan E. Walts joins Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals team; renowned business leader brings industry experience in corporate and private venture capital, business development, R&D and general management.

Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc (LSE: HEMO), the biopharmaceutical group developing new therapies and treatments for blood diseases, announces the appointment of Dr Alan E. Walts as a Board observer and business advisor.

Dr Walts is a US-based Venture Partner with Advent Life Sciences, a position he has held since January 2014.  Dr Walts currently serves as a Director and audit committee member at Eloxx Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ELOX), and as Executive Chairman of Artax Biopharma and PIC Therapeutics. He is also a founder, Director and Treasurer of The Termeer Foundation, a public 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2019. Dr Walts is currently an independent Director of Neuroelectrics Corp, and a business advisor and board observer of several private companies including Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, Arrakis Therapeutics, and Alpha Anomeric. Dr Walts' previous board and business advisory experience includes X4 Pharmaceuticals, Aura Biosciences, and Arrakis Therapeutics. Dr Walts has over 25 years of industry experience at Genzyme in business development, business strategy, research and development, general management, and venture capital. Prior to leaving Genzyme in 2013, Dr. Walts most recently managed Genzyme's corporate venture fund, Genzyme Ventures (now Sanofi Ventures). Following Genzyme's landmark sale to Sanofi, he served as a business advisor to founding Chairman and CEO of Genzyme Henri Termeer from 2013-2017, and worked closely with Henri on founding and investing in early-stage companies.

Dr Walts received a Ph.D. in chemistry from MIT in 1985, carried out post-doctoral research in biochemistry at MIT with Professor Christopher Walsh, and completed the executive Program for Management Development at Harvard Business School.

Dr Vladislav Sandler, CEO & Co-Founder of Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals, commented: 

"We are excited to welcome Dr Alan Walts as business advisor and Board observer. Alan's rich experience and deep insight into the biopharmaceutical industry will undoubtedly help to accelerate Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals' significant development pipeline."

Dr Alan Walts commented:

"I am excited about the potential of Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals' technology and I look forward to working with Dr Sandler and the board of Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals."

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About Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc

Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals is a publicly traded company (LSE: HEMO) headquartered in London, with its US operating subsidiaries, Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals LLC and Immugenyx LLC, located in New York City at its state-of-the-art research facility.

The Company is a pre-clinical stage biopharmaceutical group developing new medicines and treatments to treat blood and autoimmune disease and to bring the curative power of bone marrow transplantation to a greater number of patients suffering from otherwise incurable life-threatening diseases. Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals is developing several distinct and complementary product candidates, as well as platform technologies that it uses as engines for novel product development.

For more than 50 years, bone marrow transplantation has been used to save the lives of patients suffering from blood diseases. The risks of toxicity and death that are associated with bone marrow transplantation, however, have meant that the procedure is restricted to use only as a last resort. The Company's technology has the potential to enable many more patients suffering from devastating blood diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma, as well as severe autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, aplastic anemia and systemic lupus erythematosus (Lupus), to benefit from bone marrow transplantation.