NEWARK, Calif., Sept. 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Protagonist
Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq:PTGX) today reported that on
Sept. 15, 2018, it issued an
inducement award to Carter King, the
Company's recently hired Vice President of Business Development, in
accordance with the terms of Mr. King's employment offer letter.
The award was granted under the Protagonist Therapeutics Inducement
Award Plan, which was adopted May 29,
2018.
The inducement award consists of an option to purchase 30,000
shares of Protagonist Therapeutics common stock and has a ten-year
term. The exercise price of the option was $8.51, which was the per-share closing price of
Protagonist Therapeutics common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market
on Sept. 17, 2018. The option vests
over a four-year period, with 25 percent vesting on the first
anniversary of the employee's date of hire and the remainder
vesting in equal monthly installments over three years thereafter.
The award was approved by the Protagonist Therapeutics board of
directors compensation committee and was granted as an inducement
material to the new employee entering into employment with
Protagonist Therapeutics in accordance with Nasdaq Marketplace Rule
5635(c)(4).
Mr. King joined Protagonist as Vice President of Business
Development in September 2018. Prior
to Protagonist, Mr. King was a Business Development Consultant for
Achaogen, Inc. from 2016 to 2018. Previously, Mr. King was Vice
President of Finance and Corporate Development at Omniox, Inc. from
2015 to 2016, and held several management roles, including Vice
President of Corporate Development for AcelRx Pharmaceuticals from
2006 to 2015. Earlier in his career, Mr. King worked in corporate
development and finance at ALZA Corporation and Coulter
Pharmaceutical. Mr. King received an M.B.A. with honors from
Columbia Business School and a B.A. in
Business Economics from U.C. Santa Barbara.
About Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc.
Protagonist Therapeutics is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical
company that utilizes a proprietary technology platform to discover
and develop novel peptide-based drugs to transform existing
treatment paradigms for patients with significant unmet medical
needs. PTG-100 is an oral alpha-4-beta-7 integrin antagonist
peptide that is under development for potential treatment of
inflammatory bowel diseases. The company's interleukin-23 receptor
antagonist peptide, PTG-200, is currently in a Phase 1 clinical
trial in healthy volunteers to support a Phase 2 study in Crohn's
disease. The IL-12/23 pathway blockade is an approach that has been
validated through an FDA-approved injectable antibody drug. The
company has entered into a worldwide license and collaboration
agreement with Janssen Biotech for the clinical development of
PTG-200. Protagonist has also applied its innovative peptide
platform outside of gastrointestinal disease areas and is
developing an injectable hepcidin mimetic, PTG-300, for the
potential treatment of anemia and iron overload related to rare
blood diseases with an initial focus on beta-thalassemia. The
company has completed a Phase 1 clinical trial of PTG-300, which
established pharmacodynamic-based clinical proof-of-concept in
normal healthy volunteers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
has granted Orphan Drug Designation to PTG-300 for beta-thalassemia
for which a global Phase 2 trial is to be initiated in the fourth
quarter of 2018. Treatment of patients with myelodysplastic
syndromes, hereditary hemochromatosis and polycythemia vera
represent additional opportunities for future development of
PTG-300.
Protagonist is headquartered in Newark, California, with pre-clinical and
clinical staff in California and
discovery operations in both California and Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. For further
information, please visit http://www.protagonist-inc.com.
Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements for
purposes of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include
statements regarding our intentions or current expectations
concerning, among other things, the potential for our programs, our
research and development plans, the utility of our intellectual
property, and the adequacy of our capital resources. In some cases,
you can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as
"anticipate," "believe," "may," "will," "would," or "expect," or
the negative or plural of these words or similar expressions.
Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance
and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual
results and events to differ materially from those anticipated,
including, but not limited to, our ability to develop and
commercialize our product candidates, our ability to use and expand
our programs to build a pipeline of product candidates, our ability
to obtain and maintain regulatory approval of our product
candidates, our ability to operate in a competitive industry and
compete successfully against competitors that have greater
resources than we do, and our ability to obtain and adequately
protect intellectual property rights for our product candidates. We
discuss many of these risks in greater detail under the heading
"Risk Factors" contained in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for
the three months ended June 30, 2018
as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any
forward-looking statements that we make in this press release speak
only as of the date of this press release. We assume no obligation
to update our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of
new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this
press release.
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SOURCE Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc.