City of Industry, CA, Oct. 19, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marina Biotech, Inc. (OTCQB: MRNA), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative therapeutics for hypertension, arthritis, pain and oncology, announced today that Peter D. Weinstein, Ph.D., J.D. will join the company in the newly created role of Chief Legal Officer to support the Company’s legal, transactional and intellectual property portfolio initiatives, effective immediately.
Dr. Weinstein has served as Chief Executive Officer of Entralta, P.C., a full service legal and business firm that specializes in working with small companies, since 2012. Prior to Entralta, Dr. Weinstein served as Senior Counsel at Baxter Healthcare Corporation where he handled legal, intellectual property, transactional and business development matters for Baxter’s major hemophilia products and development programs. Dr. Weinstein has also served an attorney at Fish & Richardson, Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison and Goodwin Procter and prior to that he was an Examiner with the United States Patent & Trademark Office. Dr. Weinstein received his law degree from Boston College Law School, Ph.D. in Biology/Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania and a degree in Biology from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Weinstein is a member of the California Bar and is a registered to practice before the United States Patent & Trademark Office as a Patent Attorney.
“We are excited to have Peter join the Marina Biotech team to establish a strong legal and intellectual property organization for Marina Biotech. Peter brings with him over two decades of strong legal, transactional, intellectual property and business experience to the Company,” stated Vuong Trieu, Executive Chairman of Marina Biotech. “Marina Biotech is uniquely positioned to offer a total care platform for hypertensive with the combination of our DyrctAxess platform for drug distribution and anti-hypertensive treatments such as Prestalia. We look to Peter to expand our patent portfolio protecting DyrctAxess and Prestalia as well as our product pipeline, while also supporting the legal compliance aspects of our business.”
Dr. Weinstein stated, “I appreciate the exciting opportunity to work with the leadership at Marina to build a strong legal, transactional and intellectual property organization for Marina. I am also excited to be contributing to the transition of Marina into a strong and growing commercial organization, including working with the leadership team on Prestalia. I am fortunate to join a company where the strong total care platform for hypertension as transformative improvement in the care of hypertensive patients.”
About Prestalia®
Prestalia contains perindopril arginine, an ACE inhibitor, and amlodipine, a dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker, and is indicated for the treatment of hypertension to lower blood pressure. Prestalia may be used in patients whose blood pressure is not adequately controlled on monotherapy. Prestalia may be used as initial therapy in patients likely to need multiple drugs to achieve blood pressure goals. Lowering blood pressure reduces the risk of fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular events, primarily strokes and myocardial infarctions. These benefits have been seen in controlled trials of antihypertensive drugs from a wide variety of pharmacologic classes, including amlodipine and the ACE inhibitor class to which perindopril principally belongs.
About Marina Biotech
Our mission is to provide effective and patient centric treatment for hypertension- including resistant hypertension. In doing so creating a universal platform for the effective treatment of hypertension as well as for the distribution of fixed dose combination [FDC] hypertensive drugs such as Prestalia and those in our pipeline. The company commercial product Prestalia is approved by US FDA for the treatment of hypertension and being commercialized through the DyrctAxess platform. The company is also developing and commercializing late stage, non-addictive pain therapeutics. The company’s ‘next-generation of celecoxib,’ including IT-102 and IT-103, are designed to control the dangerous side-effect of edema that prohibits the drug from being prescribed at higher doses. These have the potential of replacing opioids and combatting the opioid epidemic. Additional information about Marina Biotech is available at http://www.marinabio.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements made in this news release may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Federal Securities laws that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and involve factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or suggested. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: (i) the ability of Marina Biotech to successfully integrate its business operations with those of IthenaPharma; (ii) the ability of Marina Biotech to obtain funding to support its clinical development; (iii) the ability of Marina Biotech to attract and/or maintain manufacturing, research, development and commercialization partners; (iv) the ability of Marina Biotech and/or a partner to successfully complete product research and development, including preclinical and clinical studies and commercialization; (v) the ability of Marina Biotech and/or a partner to obtain required governmental approvals; and (vi) the ability of Marina Biotech and/or a partner to develop and commercialize products prior to, and that can compete favorably with those of, competitors. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or suggested in any forward-looking statements are contained in Marina Biotech's most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Marina Biotech assumes no obligation to update or supplement forward-looking statements because of subsequent events.