Minoryx appoints Didier Le Normand as Group CFO and General Manager of its Belgian subsidiary

Mataró, Barcelona, Spain and Charleroi, Belgium, March 12, 2019 – Minoryx Therapeutics, a company specializing in the development of new drugs for orphan diseases, today announces that it has appointed Didier Le Normand as Group CFO as well as General Manager of its recently opened Belgian subsidiary.

Didier Le Normand started his career in banking in the US and France and then established a long international career in finance & operations as well as M&A transactions for private and listed companies, particularly in the healthcare and technology sectors. He was Director, Finance & Operations Europe North West of Leica Microsystems. Later he held Group CFO and COO roles at a number of industrial SMEs as well as some biotech and medtech firms in Europe. These include Novagali Pharma (France, ophthalmology, sold to Santen Pharma Japan in 2011), Cellnovo (UK and France, diabetes management systems) and most recently STAT-DX (Spain, molecular diagnostics platform and panels, sold to Qiagen in 2018).

“We are thrilled to welcome Didier Le Normand as the new group CFO and the General Manager at our newly opened subsidiary in Belgium,” said Marc Martinell, CEO of Minoryx. “In this leadership role his wealth of expertise in finance & operations as well as governance will further strengthen our corporate management. I look forward to working closely with Didier to progress the company through this transformative and exciting stage of development.”

“It is a great pleasure for me to join Minoryx Therapeutics at a key stage in its promising innovative CNS drug portfolio. Based on strong support from its Board of Directors I am excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Marc and the team towards further strategic achievements as well as to contribute to the development of the Belgian activities,” said Didier Le Normand.

“We are delighted to see the hiring of an experienced Group CFO, who will also play a key role as the General Manager of the recently created Belgian subsidiary,” said Philippe Monteyne of the Belgian Fund+, who recently led the major Series B funding round of Minoryx.

Minoryx’s lead candidate, MIN-102, is a novel, orally bioavailable and selective PPAR gamma agonist with a superior profile for central nervous system-related diseases and good in-vivo efficacy. It is currently in clinical trials for the treatment of adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) (phase 2/3) and Friedreich’s ataxia (phase 2).

About MIN-102

MIN-102 is a novel, brain-penetrant, orally bioavailable and selective PPAR gamma agonist, able to engage the target receptor at the levels required for efficacy within the CNS. It showed robust preclinical proof of concept in animal models of multiple diseases modulating pathways leading to mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, demyelination and axonal degeneration. MIN-102 has the potential to treat several CNS conditions including orphan diseases such as X-ALD and Friedreich’s ataxia. A phase 1 clinical study was successfully completed confirming that MIN-102 is well tolerated and is able to cross the blood brain barrier and engage PPAR gamma within the CNS at an equivalent level as in preclinical studies. MIN-102 has received Orphan Drug Designation for the treatment of X-ALD in both the EU and the US.

About Minoryx Therapeutics

Minoryx is a clinical stage biotech company leading the development of new therapies for orphan CNS diseases with a high unmet medical need, such as X-ALD and Friedreich’s Ataxia. The company’s lead program is MIN-102. The Minoryx team is made up of a group of drug discovery and development experts with several decades of experience in biotech and pharma. The company is backed by a syndicate of experienced investors and has support from a network of other organizations. Minoryx was founded in 2011 and has operations in Spain and Belgium. It has raised a total of €50M.

www.minoryx.com