Tranzyme Pharma Appoints Pharmaceutical Industry Veteran John H. Johnson as Chairman of its Board of Directors
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – December 15, 2010 – Tranzyme Pharma today announced the appointment of John H. Johnson as Chairman of its Board of Directors. Mr. Johnson currently serves as President, Lilly Oncology and Senior Vice President, Eli Lilly and Company.
”I am extremely pleased to welcome John to our team. His extensive executive and operational management experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries make him ideally suited for the Chairman position and a valued addition to our Board“, said Vipin K. Garg, PhD, Tranzyme’s President and CEO.
Prior to his current appointment at Lilly in November 2009, Mr. Johnson served as Chief Executive Officer of ImClone Systems and was also a member of ImClone’s Board of Directors until the company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lilly in November 2008. Prior to joining ImClone, Mr. Johnson served as Company Group Chairman of Johnson & Johnson’s Worldwide Biopharmaceuticals unit. In this executive role, he was responsible for the Johnson & Johnson Biotechnology, Immunology and Oncology commercial businesses, including Centocor, Inc., Ortho Biotech Products, L.P. and the Worldwide Strategic Marketing group.
Mr. Johnson began his healthcare career with Pfizer where he held positions of increasing responsibility in sales and sales management before joining Johnson & Johnson to help lead their entry into the anti-infectives arena. He advanced through positions of increasing responsibility with Ortho-McNeil, including leading the commercial groups responsible for the development of sales, marketing and new product strategies of several of the company’s flagship brands. Mr. Johnson also previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Parkstone Medical Information Systems. He received a B.S. degree from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania.
About Tranzyme Pharma
Tranzyme Pharma is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing novel, first-in-class small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of acute (hospital-based) and chronic gastrointestinal motility disorders. All of Tranzyme’s product candidates have been discovered using its proprietary drug discovery (chemistry) technology, MATCH™, which enables the construction of synthetic libraries of drug-like, macrocyclic compounds in a predictable and efficient manner.
Tranzyme has two corporate partnerships — a drug discovery partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company to discover, develop and commercialize additional novel compounds in multiple therapeutic areas, and a license agreement with Norgine for the co-development of Tranzyme’s intravenous ghrelin agonist, ulimorelin.