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Visterra Announces Additions to Its Management Team and Board of Directors
[October 31, 2014]

Visterra Announces Additions to Its Management Team and Board of Directors


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)--

Visterra, Inc., a biotechnology company that uses its proprietary technology platform to identify unique disease targets and design novel therapeutics, today announced two key additions to the company's executive management team and board of directors. José M. Trevejo, MD, PhD, has been appointed Vice President of Development and Akshay Vaishnaw, MD, PhD, of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has been elected to the company's board of directors.

"We are pleased to add two executives with exceptional biotech experience to the Visterra leadership team," said Brian J. G. Pereira, MD, President and CEO of Visterra. "José's deep expertise in developing, advancing and commercializing products for a wide range of diseases is an ideal fit for Visterra. His proven leadership will be critical to our success as we advance our pipeline of multiple product candidates to and through clinical development for challenging infectious diseases."

Dr. Pereira continued, "Akshay brings broad and extensive industry knowledge to our board and has a demonstrated track record of advancing and developing novel therapeutics based on innovative technology, which has led to nine distinct programs in clinical trials at Biogen Idec Inc. and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. His experience and vision will be invaluable as we drive towards developing unique therapeutics for infectious diseases and the company enters into the next phase of growth."

In his role as Vice President of Development, Dr. Trevejo will oversee all preclinical and clinical development, as well as regulatory affairs for the company. This includes advancing clinical programs for product candidates from Visterra's pipeline of novel monoclonal antibodies that target infectious diseases, including advancing VIS410 for seasonal and pandemic influenza into phase 2 clinical studies and progressing VIS513 for dengue fever into the clinic.

"Visterra's proprietary technology has shown the potential to create novel therapies with unique characteristics and exceptional clinical benefits for patients with infectious diseases," said Dr. Trevejo. "It is exciting to be a part of an innovative approach with the potetial for significant global impact and I am delighted to join Visterra during this very important time."



"I am thrilled to join Visterra's board of directors, given the company's promising technology and the opportunities to utilize this innovative approach to create therapeutics to meet the increasingly important unmet needs in infectious diseases," said Dr. Vaishnaw. "I look forward to collaborating with the outstanding team of management and directors and contributing to the further development of the company's pipeline of therapeutics to impact global health."

Dr. Trevejo Biography


Dr. Trevejo is a physician-scientist with more than 20 years of experience in infectious disease research and development and clinical practice. Prior to joining Visterra, Dr. Trevejo served as Medical Director at Genentech, Inc., where he led the clinical and biomarker strategy for development of an influenza biological therapy that rapidly progressed from preclinical to phase 2 clinical trials. Previously, he was the Medical Director and Clinical Disease Area Lead for Infectious Diseases at Vertex (News - Alert) Pharmaceuticals, where he led the clinical development of an influenza small molecule therapy and participated in the filing of telaprevir, one of the first approved direct acting antivirals for hepatitis C. Dr. Trevejo started his career as a principal investigator and scientist at the Draper Laboratory, where he conducted diagnostics research and development, and managed Department of Defense-supported programs relating to emerging influenza countermeasures. Dr. Trevejo received his BS in Applied Mathematics from UCLA and his MD and PhD from the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program at Cornell-Rockefeller-Memorial Sloan Kettering. He completed his clinical training at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is a licensed physician with board certification in infectious disease.

Dr. Vaishnaw Biography

Dr. Vaishnaw is currently Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which he joined in 2006. Under his leadership at Alnylam, the company is developing a novel class of medicines, RNAi therapeutics, from which seven distinct programs have entered clinical trials. Previously, Dr. Vaishnaw was Senior Director, Translational Medicine at Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen Idec Inc.), where he was involved in many aspects of clinical research and business development, and led the effort for the approval of alefacept (Amevive™) for psoriasis. Dr. Vaishnaw received his MD from the University of Wales College of Medicine, U.K., with Distinctions in Pathology and Medicine, and his PhD from the University of London, U.K., in Molecular Immunology. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, U.K.

About Visterra

Visterra is a biotechnology company that uses its proprietary Hierotope™ Platform to identify unique disease targets and design effective therapeutics. The company's technology is powered by computational tools and techniques, called Atomic Interaction Network (AIN) analysis, which uniquely identifies an area, or epitope, on the target site that is fundamental to its structure and function. This ideal epitope, or hierotope, becomes the target against which the company designs a novel therapeutic to effectively and durably combat the disease. The company is currently focused on therapeutics for infectious diseases and its lead product candidate, VIS410, is a broad spectrum human monoclonal antibody for the prevention and treatment of both seasonal and pandemic influenza. The company's second product candidate, VIS513, is a human monoclonal antibody for the treatment of dengue fever that has been shown to broadly neutralize all four dengue virus serotypes. Visterra was founded based on scientific work developed in the laboratory of Dr. Ram Sasisekharan and licensed from MIT (News - Alert). For more information please visit www.visterrainc.com.


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