Humboldt Prize awarded to Biotica founder Professor Peter Leadlay

Cambridge, UK: 4 January 2011.

Professor Peter F. Leadlay FRS FRSC, Herchel Smith Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and a co-founder of Biotica, has been chosen by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to receive a prestigious Humboldt Prize.

The prize is awarded to internationally renowned scientists and scholars whose fundamental discoveries, new theories or insights have had a significant impact on their discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.

“All of us at Biotica congratulate Peter on this well-deserved recognition of his work”, commented Dr. Barrie Wilkinson, Biotica’s Vice President of Research. “The technology he pioneered is enabling us to make novel molecules with extraordinary therapeutic properties” he added.

The prize recognizes Prof. Leadlay’s research into biosynthesis of polyketide antibiotics, which provides the foundation for Biotica’s polyketide engineering technology platform. Using the technology, Biotica has built a robust pipeline of programs and partnerships focused on novel engineered polyketide therapeutics, which could not be identified using other approaches. Prof. Leadlay remains closely involved with Biotica, both as a scientific consultant and serving on the Company’s board of directors.

About Biotica

Biotica is a privately-held biotechnology company that discovers and develops polyketide therapeutics. It has a growing pipeline of novel therapeutic programmes supported by clinical validation. These include nPT-mTOR (unique mTOR inhibitors partnered with Pfizer), nPT-CyP (cyclophilin inhibitors for HCV) and nPT-ery (anti-inflammatory erythromycin analogues partnered with GlaxoSmithKline). All of Biotica’s projects employ its proprietary novoPT™ technology, which enables it to select from the many known polyketides with biological activity and make a range of derivatives that are either difficult or impossible to make by medicinal chemistry methods. For additional information visit www.biotica.com.