Pharmacy News Article

Medgenics, Inc., the developer of Biopump, a novel technology for the sustained production and delivery of therapeutic proteins in patients using their own tissue, has announced the appointment of Marvin Garovoy, M.D. as Chief Medical Officer.

Dr. Garovoy is a transplant nephrologist, biotechnology executive and former university professor with experience in all stages of clinical development, the Company noted in a release.

"While serving as Acting Chief Medical Officer since January 2012, Dr. Garovoy has helped Medgenics achieve a number of important clinical and corporate milestones," said Andrew L. Pearlman, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Medgenics. "Dr. Garovoy's vast experience and skillset will be a considerable asset as we initiate several new clinical trials through the end of 2012 in the U.S. and Israel, and leverage our Biopump platform technology as we explore the expansion of our development portfolio into new indications."

For the past 16 years, Medgenics said that Dr. Garovoy has been a biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry executive and consultant, having held a variety of positions including Chief Medical Officer at drug development companies working on biologics and small molecule drugs. He has led or been involved with the clinical development and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submissions and approvals at a number of companies including Genentech, Inc., XOMA Corp., Hyperion Therapeutics, Inc, Arriva Pharmaceuticals, Inc, Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. He was lead physician on the development of an anti-adhesion monoclonal antibody (Raptiva) in Phase I and Phase II clinical studies at XOMA and in collaboration with Genentech on Phase III clinical studies to FDA approval.

Dr. Garovoy has particular experience in inflammatory and immunologically mediated diseases including nephrology (kidney transplantation), cardiovascular (heart transplantation), respiratory (asthma, lung transplantation), endocrinology (diabetes), gastrointestinal (inflammatory bowel disease), dermatology (psoriasis, atopic dermatitis), rheumatology (rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus) and metabolic diseases.

Dr. Garovoy was a Professor of Surgery, Medicine and Laboratory Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco as well as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In addition, Dr. Garovoy has served as a Major and a transplant nephrologist in the United States Air Force. He is widely published having authored 178 peer-reviewed papers, 45 chapters and two books. Dr. Garovoy has five issued patents.

Medgenics is developing and commercializing Biopump, a proprietary tissue-based platform technology for the sustained production and delivery of therapeutic proteins using the patient's own skin biopsy for the treatment of a range of chronic diseases including anemia, hepatitis, and hemophilia, among others.

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