Alchemia Announces Appointment of Non Executive Director

BRISBANE, Australia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Board of Alchemia Limited (ASX:ACL) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Carlo Montagner to the position of non executive director.

Alchemia’s Chairman, Mr Mel Bridges, said, “Mr Montagner brings to the board a wealth of experience and expertise in the international pharmaceutical industry, particularly in the oncology space.”

“Mr. Montagner has held numerous executive positions with high profile pharmaceutical companies including President of Abraxis Oncology; Executive Vice President and Head of Global Oncology for Schering, A.G.; Head of Oncology and Cardiovascular for Sanofi-Aventis Japan and Global Senior Director Marketing and Medical Affairs managing the commercialization of Taxotere globally.”

For the past eight years Mr Montagner has worked abroad assisting these companies to build specialty oncology practices, both in terms of the clinical and commercial aspects together with the creation of dedicated sales and marketing teams. Mr Bridges stated that “at this stage in Alchemia’s development, access to this experience together with the extensive network of international oncology contacts he brings, is an enormous boon for the company.”

“It is also worth noting that Mr Montagner has worked extensively on the commercialization of Abraxane, a reformulation of the cancer drug paclitaxel, and therefore has direct experience of a product that is similar in concept to Alchemia’s HA-irinotecan.”

Mr Montagner recently returned from the United States with his family to settle permanently in Australia as President PanAsia for Abraxis Bioscience. He also has his own company with distribution rights for several oncology drugs which will be marketed in the Australasian region when approved. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

“The Board looks forward to working with Mr Montagner in achieving Alchemia’s goals, particularly guiding the company with the commercialization of the HyACT technology platform.”

About Alchemia Limited – www.alchemia.com.au

Alchemia is a drug discovery and development Company founded on its chemistry expertise. The Company’s lead program is fondaparinux (synthetic heparin, a generic version of GlaxoSmithKline’s Arixtra^®) which is expected to generate near term revenues for the company in 2009 and was recently partnered with Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Inc. for the US market. Alchemia’s pipeline of assets is built on two platform technologies: HyACT^® (targeted cancer delivery) and VAST^TM (drug discovery). HA-irinotecan, for the treatment of colorectal cancer, recently achieved positive Phase II clinical trial results.