Singapore: Spinifex Pharmaceuticals announced that Dr Ronald Marcus would be the new Chief Medical Officer. He would be responsible for driving the development of Spinifex's lead candidate EMA401 and the Company's pre-clinical pipeline.

EMA401 is a novel angiotensin II type 2 (AT2) receptor antagonist being developed as a potential first-in-class oral treatment for chronic pain without CNS side-effects.

With more than 20 years' pharmaceutical clinical development experience, Dr Marcus joins Spinifex following a successful career as executive director at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Dr Marcus has been recognized within industry for his excellence in overall drug development, innovative strategic leadership and executional excellence.

His area of expertise include early and late drug development process, disease biology and regulatory affairs. In addition to the approval of over 20 NDAs and sNDAs globally for Abilify, Dr Marcus also led the successful development of antidepressant Serzone.

Mr Tom McCarthy, Spinifex's CEO said, "Dr Marcus comes with an expert knowledge on all areas of drug development and this recruitment would be instrumental for Spinifex, as we build our clinical development and senior management team."

Dr Marcus added that he was very pleased to join the concern as Spinifex has done an excellent job in developing a new treatment for chronic pain without CNS side effects.