Protagonist Therapeutics Appoints Suneel K. Gupta, Ph.D., as Executive Vice President of Clinical Operations and Pharmacology

NEWARK, Calif., Jan. 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. PTGX today announced the appointment of Suneel Gupta, Ph.D., as Executive Vice President of Clinical Operations and Clinical Pharmacology. In this role, Dr. Gupta will provide executive management and oversight of clinical operations and clinical pharmacology of development candidates in our pipeline.

"Dr. Gupta has an excellent record of developing important therapeutic agents in multiple indications from early clinical development to successful market approval," commented Dinesh V. Patel, Ph.D., Protagonist President and Chief Executive Officer. "As we move forward with multiple assets in our pipeline in diverse therapeutic areas, his strong operational experience in clinical development will be a great asset. As an accomplished drug developer with broad experience, Dr. Gupta is a critical addition to our senior leadership team which we expect to continue to build and strengthen in 2019 and beyond."

With over 30 years of industry experience, Dr. Gupta has contributed to the development and commercialization of more than 12 products approved by both the U.S. FDA and the European Medicines Agency. Before joining Protagonist, Dr. Gupta held the position of Chief Scientific Officer at Impax Pharmaceuticals. Prior to Impax, Dr. Gupta held leadership positions at ALZA/Johnson & Johnson and Ciba Geigy (India). Dr. Gupta received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester and conducted post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco. He has coauthored more than 200 research publications and is a co-inventor for over 40 patents.

About Protagonist Therapeutics

Protagonist Therapeutics is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that utilizes a proprietary technology platform to discover and develop novel peptide-based drugs to transform existing treatment paradigms for patients with significant unmet medical needs. PTG-300 is an injectable hepcidin mimetic for the potential treatment of anemia and iron overload related to rare blood diseases with an initial focus on beta thalassemia. PTG-200 is an oral peptide interleukin-23 receptor antagonist in development for the treatment of Crohn's disease. The company has entered into a worldwide license and collaboration agreement with Janssen Biotech for the clinical development of PTG-200. PN-943 is an oral, gut-restricted alpha-4-beta-7 integrin antagonist peptide in development for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.

Protagonist is headquartered in Newark, California, with pre-clinical and clinical staff in California and discovery operations in both California and Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. For further information, please visit http://www.protagonist-inc.com.

Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding our intentions or current expectations concerning, among other things, the potential for our programs. In some cases, you can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as "will," "expect," or the negative or plural of these words or similar expressions.  Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from those anticipated, including, but not limited to, our ability to develop and commercialize our product candidates, our ability to earn milestone payments under our collaboration agreement with Janssen, our ability to use and expand our programs to build a pipeline of product candidates, our ability to obtain and maintain regulatory approval of our product candidates, our ability to operate in a competitive industry and compete successfully against competitors that have greater resources than we do, and our ability to obtain and adequately protect intellectual property rights for our product candidates.  We discuss many of these risks in greater detail under the heading "Risk Factors" contained in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended September 30, 2018, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any forward-looking statements that we make in this press release speak only as of the date of this press release. We assume no obligation to update our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this press release.

SOURCE Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc.