New Board nominee with outstanding scientific and managerial background to immediately provide advisory services
ALLSCHWIL/BASEL, SWITZERLAND - 30 November 2011 - Actelion (SIX: ATLN) today announced the nomination of Professor Dr. Peter Gruss for election to the Company's Board of Directors (BoD) at the 2012 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of shareholders, to be held on 4 May 2012.
Prof. Gruss, a molecular biologist by training and head of the German research organization Max Planck Society, will, as of 1 December 2011, start to play an active role as a scientific adviser to the Actelion BoD. If elected, he will then join as a full Board member at the AGM 2012.
Jean-Pierre Garnier, Chairman of Actelion's Board of Directors, commented: "We are extremely fortunate that Prof. Gruss is prepared to join Actelion's Board. Peter has had an exemplary career, both as a scientist and as a research executive, leading the Max Planck Society since 2002. I expect that his involvement and addition to our Board will further strengthen and guide our ongoing efforts to turn scientific discoveries into value-creating medicines for all stakeholders."
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About Professor Gruss
Peter Gruss has been President of the Max Planck Society since 2002. He became a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society in 1986, when he was appointed as Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. He earned his PhD in biology at the University of Heidelberg and is honorary professor at the University of Göttingen.
Peter Gruss began his scientific career as a research assistant at the Institute for Virus Research in Heidelberg in 1977. From there, he moved on to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, initially as a post-doc associate, and later as an expert consultant. In 1982, he was appointed as Professor at the Institute for Microbiology at the University of Heidelberg.
Over the years, he has received several honors, including the Leibniz Prize, the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the German Prize for Technology and Innovation by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Lower Saxony State Prize, as well as the German Federal Cross of Merit.
As President of the Max Planck Society, Peter Gruss holds numerous offices and functions. Among others, he is a member of the Senates of the Alliance of Scientific Organizations in Germany, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, as well as of acatech, the German Academy of Science and Engineering. In addition, he is member of the Supervisory Boards of Siemens AG and Munich RE, as well as of the Advisory Board of Deloitte. He was appointed as a member of the "Innovation Dialogue" of the Federal Chancellery by Angela Merkel.
About the Max Planck Society
The Max Planck Society is Germany's most successful research organization. Since its establishment in 1948, no fewer than 17 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists, putting it on a par with the best and most prestigious research institutions worldwide. The more than 13,000 publications each year in internationally renowned scientific journals are proof of the outstanding research work conducted at Max Planck Institutes -many of those articles are among the most-cited publications in their relevant fields.
Actelion Ltd.
Actelion Ltd is a biopharmaceutical company with its corporate headquarters in Allschwil/Basel, Switzerland. Actelion's first drug Tracleer®, an orally available dual endothelin receptor antagonist, has been approved as a therapy for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Actelion markets Tracleer® through its own subsidiaries in key markets worldwide, including the United States (based in South San Francisco), the European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia and Switzerland. Actelion, founded in late 1997, is a leading player in innovative science related to the endothelium - the single layer of cells separating every blood vessel from the blood stream. Actelion's over 2,500 employees focus on the discovery, development and marketing of innovative drugs for significant unmet medical needs. Actelion shares are traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ticker symbol: ATLN) as part of the Swiss blue-chip index SMI (Swiss Market Index SMI®).
For further information please contact:
Roland Haefeli
Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations & Public Affairs
Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Gewerbestrasse 16, CH-4123 Allschwil
+41 61 565 62 62
+1 650 624 69 36
www.actelion.com
