New Appointment to Scientific Advisory Committee at Egenix, Inc.

MILLBROOK, N.Y., Feb. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Donald Fresne, President and CEO of Egenix, Inc. is pleased to announce the appointment of Adam J. Stein, Ph.D. to its Scientific Advisory Committee.

Dr. Stein has over eighteen years of experience in structural biology, with the last seven in applying structural biology and biophysical chemistry to the drug discovery efforts in biotech. While at deCODE Genetics, he was able to design fragment libraries that enabled us to elucidate novel scaffolds for various targets of interest. Eventually, this led to the discovery of novel allosteric inhibitors for PDE4 and MK2 (not published). During his tenure at deCODE, he was also exposed to the CRO business model where he interacted with clients. As deCODE went bankrupt, his division was sold and re-branded as Emerald Biostructures. He decided to leave and was fortunate to get a position with the government working on upper level drug discovery projects as well as the NIH funded MCSG. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a position as the Director of Structural Biology for a CRO, XTAL Biostructures. He led their epigenetics platform and drug discovery efforts using structure-based drug design and biophysical characterization. He was able to generate the first structures of several unknown high impact drug targets. He accepted a position at Cayman Chemical to start a CRO business as well as advance Cayman Chemical's drug discovery efforts using molecular modeling, structure-based drug design, and biophysical chemistry. He currently has a services business and has developed lead molecules for Cayman's HPGDS program

Egenix is a privately held, New York-based biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative cancer therapeutics. The company's therapeutic platform technology consists of small molecule drugs applicable for the treatment and prevention of a broad spectrum of cancers, autism, and Alzheimer's. Our lead drug candidates inhibit the "translation initiation factor" eIF4E, specifically blocking production of multiple cancer promoting proteins and promoting apoptosis (programmed cell death) and upregulation of tumor suppressor genes. The company licensed this technology from Harvard Medical School in 2007. eIF4E is an attractive cancer therapeutic target because every function necessary for cancer growth and metastasis is influenced or mediated be a gene product that is regulated by this translation initiation factor. Data from human cancer xenograft studies using two of our lead compounds tested against breast cancer and melanoma demonstrated 100% tumor inhibition and 20% to 30% tumor reduction. For more information visit www.egenixinc.com

SOURCE Egenix, Inc.