Selexis SA Appoints Yemi Onakunle as Vice President of Strategic and Market Development

GENEVA, Jan. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Selexis SA announced today the appointment of Yemi Onakunle, Ph.D., M.B.A. as Vice President of Strategic and Market Development.

Dr. Onakunle will report directly to President and CEO, Dr. Igor Fisch and will be responsible for expanding Selexis' presence in the drug discovery, next generation biologics and difficult-to-express protein markets.

"Selexis is experiencing a tremendous growth cycle by offering more innovation and long-term value to our customers. Yemi's wealth of business development and sales experience in biologics and cell line development will be instrumental in expanding the SUREtechnology Platform™ into important markets," said Dr. Igor Fisch, CEO of Selexis. "Yemi's understanding of our technology and expanding global customer base makes him an excellent choice for this newly created position."

Dr. Onakunle has over 15 years' experience in drug manufacturing and cell line development. Prior to working at Selexis, Dr. Onakunle was Director of Commercial Development at Diosynth RTP Inc. and Associate Director of Business Development at Lonza Custom Manufacturing – organizations providing process development and cGMP manufacturing services in mammalian production platforms. More recently, Dr. Onakunle was Head of Sales and Marketing at Bachem Americas Inc. - a contract manufacturing organization focusing on peptides and complex organic molecules. In these positions, he has a strong record of consistently growing the customer base and sales and expanding product offerings into new markets. Dr. Onakunle is a member of the Board of Directors of VLP Biotech Inc, a vaccine development company based in San Diego, CA and has been a Business Advisor to several biopharmaceutical and drug delivery companies. Educated in the UK, Dr. Onakunle holds a Ph.D. from the University of Kent at Canterbury and an M.B.A. from Imperial College Management School.

About Selexis SA

Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Selexis SA is a global life science company with innovative technologies and world-class expert services for drug discovery, cell line development and scale-up to manufacturing of therapeutic proteins. The Company's SUREtechnology Platform™ is based on Selexis Genetic Elements™ -- novel DNA-based elements that control the dynamic organization of chromatin within all mammalian cells and allow for higher and more stable expression of recombinant proteins. Selexis has generated over 1,300 cell lines being used in a variety of programs from drug discovery to late-stage clinical trials. The Company anticipates three products manufactured from cell lines using the Selexis SUREtechnology Platform™ to be launched in 2012.

For more information, visit http://www.selexis.com

Media Contact:

Robert Meister
robert.meister(at)selexis(dot)com
(602) 953-1716

SOURCE Selexis SA