Chemizon Strengthens Management Team With Addition of Dr. Xin Bu, M.D., Dr. Haihong...

Chemizon Strengthens Management Team With Addition of Dr. Xin Bu, M.D., Dr. Haihong Ni, Ph.D. and Dr. Albert Gyorkos, Ph.D.

LONGMONT, Colo.--(Business Wire)--
Chemizon, the drug discovery division of Optomagic Co. Ltd.
announced today the addition of three new members to its senior
management team. Dr. Xin Bu, M.D. has been named Director of Biology
and Dr. Haihong Ni has been named Director of Computational Chemistry.
Both Dr. Bu and Dr. Ni will be based in Chemizon's Beijing R&D
facility and will be tasked with building and managing their
respective groups. In addition, Dr. Albert Gyorkos has been named
Director of Strategic Planning and will be based in Chemizon's U.S.
offices in Longmont, Co.

"I am delighted that Xin, Haihong and Albert have decided to join
Chemizon at this critical period in our growth," said Anthony Piscopio
Chairman and C.E.O. of Optomagic Co., Ltd. "Their broad experience and
proven track records in drug discovery will be tremendous assets to
the organization."

Dr. Bu brings 20 years of experience in health care and will be
responsible for managing Chemizon's Discovery Biology activities
including target validation, primary and secondary screening. In
addition, Dr. Bu will work closely with our strategic partner CrownBio
to generate PK/PD, animal pharmacology and translational medicine
data. Dr. Bu received his M.S. degree in biochemistry and his M.D.
degree from Xi'an JiaoTong University School of Medicine, Xi'an, P.R.
China. After a 10 year research appointment at the Vanderbilt
University School of Medicine in the departments of Cardiology and
Gastroenterology, Dr. Bu joined Eli Lilly and Company in April, 2000
where his responsibilities included: development and optimization of
protocols for drug discovery, target identification and validation, In
vitro assay development (both biochemical and cell based assays), and
Innovation technology development.

Dr. Ni will be responsible for growing and managing Chemizon's
Computational Chemistry group which will focus on applying both
structure and ligand based approaches to guided library design, lead
identification through virtual screening and rational drug design
efforts. In addition, Dr. Ni will be responsible for managing
Chemizon's chemoinformatics platform. Dr. Ni received her B.S. degrees
from Peking University and her M.S. degree from Duke University in
Physical and Theoretical/Computational Chemistry. After receiving her
Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Biophysical
Chemistry/Computational Chemistry with a minor concentration in
Computer Science in 1999, Dr. Ni accepted a postdoctoral position at
the University of California-San Diego where she was awarded an NIH
postdoctoral fellowship. In 2001, Dr. Ni joined Astra Zeneca as a
Molecular Modeler in the core computational chemistry group where she
provided modeling support and biophysics expertise to several early
and late stage discovery programs. Dr. Ni brings extensive
structure-based and ligand-based design experience to Chemizon.

Dr. Gyorkos will work closely with the CEO and V.P. of Business
Development to formulate and execute strategic plans that will define
and advance company goals, identify new technologies and product
opportunities and help position the company for long-term growth. Dr
Gyorkos received his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from
Colorado State University, and has served in various capacities in
both large and small discovery organizations including Rhone-Poulenc
Ag, Cortech and Array Biopharma Inc. Prior to joining Chemizon, Dr.
Gyorkos managed medicinal chemistry programs focused on CNS and
Inflammation indications, designed and reduced to practice commercial
API processes and worked in various business development roles.

About Chemizon: Chemizon is a rapidly growing organization focused
on collaborative drug discovery, with operations in South Korea, China
and the United States. With an integrated discovery platform that
includes medicinal chemistry, structural biology and pharmacology, our
goal is to become the partner of choice for pharmaceutical and biotech
companies seeking to enhance their product pipelines. Chemizon
currently has active collaborative programs in the development of
oncology and inflammation therapeutics while continuing to build
expertise in other therapeutic areas. For more information on
Chemizon, please visit our web site at www.chemizon.com.

Chemizon
Ramesh Subramanian, 856-637-2232
VP, Business Development
sramesh@chemizon.com

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