Cequent Names Ted Hibben Chief Business Officer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Cequent Pharmaceuticals, a pioneer
in the development of novel products to deliver RNAi-based treatments to
prevent and treat human disease, announced that Ted Hibben has joined the
company as chief business officer. Mr. Hibben comes to Cequent from Coley
Pharmaceutical Group, where he was most recently vice president of business
development and alliance management and played a key role in the company's
$233 million acquisition by Pfizer in 2008. Coley was a publicly traded
biopharmaceutical company specializing in vaccine adjuvant technology and a
new class of immunomodulatory drug candidates designed to fight cancers,
asthma, infectious diseases, and autoimmune diseases.

"Strategic partners have been key to Cequent's success to date and will become
even more important as we continue to move our tkRNAi technology from the
laboratory into clinical development against multiple diseases. Ted brings to
Cequent a wealth of experience orchestrating a full range of strategic
collaborations with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies - from drug
discovery, research, and clinical-development partnerships to licensing
agreements," said Cequent President and CEO, Peter Parker. "Beyond his role in
the Pfizer acquisition, Ted's recent track record includes closing nearly a
dozen alliances totaling $750 million of itemized pre-commercial development
milestones with companies like Novartis, GSK, and Merck."

Regarding Mr. Hibben's role at Cequent, Mr. Parker said, "Ted will focus on
external partnering activities in three major areas. On our inflammatory bowel
disease (IBD) program, he will look for partner(s) to further develop one or
more of the 11 targets we are working on for Crohn's disease and ulcerative
colitis; he will also seek to partner our CEQ508 candidate for FAP, slated for
a Phase I clinical trial in 2009. FAP (familial adenomatous polyposis) is an
inherited precursor to colon cancer that causes hundreds of polyps to form in
the colon. In addition, Ted will interact with companies that would like to
license our technology to deliver therapeutic RNAi for novel metabolic,
oncology, or other targets."

Previously, Mr. Hibben served as a senior executive and a corporate and
business development consultant for public and private biopharmaceutical
companies, including, among others: Centagenetix, Inc., in conjunction with
its merger into Elixir Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Pericor Science, Inc., where he
led strategic planning, business operations, and product development for this
start-up advancing a novel epithelial drug-delivery technology; and Ontogeny,
Inc. (now Curis, Inc.), where he guided Ontogeny's merger with Reprogenesis
and Creative Biomolecules. Mr. Hibben has an MBA from Harvard Business School
and a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College.

About Cequent Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (www.cequentpharma.com)
An early-stage biopharmaceutical company, Cequent is pioneering the
development of novel therapeutics to prevent and treat a wide range of human
disorders - from inflammatory disease to cancer - based on the company's
proprietary technology, TransKingdom RNA interference (tkRNAi). Cequent's
first products, now in pre-clinical development, are drug candidates targeting
colon-cancer prevention and inflammatory bowel disease. The company designed
its powerful tkRNAi technology to deactivate specific disease-causing genes
safely and effectively, using non-pathogenic bacteria as an engine to produce
and deliver RNAi directly into cells. It is based on ground-breaking
scientific research originating at the Institut Pasteur (Paris, France) and at
the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School. A privately
held company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cequent was established in
2006.

SOURCE Cequent Pharmaceuticals

Caroline Grossman, Cequent Pharmaceuticals, Inc., +1-781-771-5579,
caroline.grossman@gmail.com