BerGenBio ASA ("BerGenBio" or "the Company") announces key appointments to executive team and Board to prepare organisation for next phase of development

 

Bergen, Norway, 14 March 2019 - BerGenBio ASA (OSE:BGBIO), a clinical-stage
biopharmaceutical company developing a pipeline of first-in-class AXL kinase
inhibitors to treat multiple cancer indications, announces today changes made to
its executive team and Board of Directors, to strengthen the organisation and
prepare it for late stage clinical trials towards the second half of 2019.
(i) Executive team

Specifically, Dr Dominic Smethurst (MA MBChB MRCP MFPM) has been appointed Chief
Medical Officer (CMO) in a permanent capacity taking over from Interim CMO Dr
Alan Barge. Dominic trained as a physician in Cambridge and Nottingham and
brings two decades of experience in clinical development and leadership roles
within the biopharma industry and leading consultancies including AstraZeneca,
Amgen, Prescient Life Sciences and ICON.

Most recently, he served as CMO at Tusk Therapeutics Ltd, an immune-oncology
biotech which was acquired by Roche in 2018.

Further, the Company has made key hires strengthening its regulatory affairs
function and announces that Dr Anthony Brown will be leaving his post as Chief
Scientific Officer (CSO) to pursue other opportunities.

(ii) Changes to the Board

Following the Company's Annual General Meeting (AGM) held on 13 March 2019 the
following Board changes have become effective:

  · Grunde Eriksen,
  · Dr Debra Barker, and
  · Dr Pamela A. Trail

have joined the Board as Non-Executive Directors.

Grunde Eriksen is the founder and CEO of Altitude Capital AS, a private
investment company established in 2016. Grunde is an experienced capital markets
advisor and investor. He began his career in 1998 in Stockholms Enskilda Bank's
("SEB") corporate finance division in Stockholm before moving to the equity
capital markets team in London. He then spent a further two years at SEB in
Norway before joining Arctic Securities in 2007 as a partner working in equity
sales. He is a Norwegian citizen.

Dr Debra Barker is a seasoned clinical development executive with experience
from Novartis, Roche, Smithkline Beecham and Knoll and served until recently as
the Chief Medical and Development Officer at Polyphor Ltd. Dr Barker has a
Diploma in Pharmaceutical Medicine and received a MSc in immunology from the
King's College in London and a Medical Degree from the Queens College,
Cambridge, UK. She is a UK-Swiss citizen.

Dr Pamela A. Trail is CSO of Molecular Partners AG. Previously she held key
strategic oncology leadership roles at Regeneron, MedImmune, Bayer Healthcare
and BMS and served as CSO at Seattle Genetics. Dr. Trail received her Ph.D. from
the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT and was a postdoctoral Research Fellow
at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, NY.

Stein Holst Annexstad, Hilde Furberg, Kari Grønås, and Jon Øyvind Eriksen have
resigned from the Board. Sveinung Hole, previously a Non-Executive Director, has
become Chair, and Stener Kvinnsland remains as a Non-Executive Director.

Sveinung Hole, Chair at BerGenBio, commented: «We welcome Grunde, Debra and
Pamela to the Board. All three are highly experienced in their respective fields
and will add significant strength and depth to our Board at this exciting time
for BerGenBio as we push towards key value-driving catalysts this year and
beyond. Their insight and knowledge will be invaluable as we focus on initiating
late stage clinical trials with bemcentinib in acute myeloid leukaemia and non
-small cell lung cancer, as well as initiating a first-in-patient phase 1b trial
for our BGB149 antibody.

«I would also like to thank Stein, Hilde, Kari and Jon for their valuable
contribution to BerGenBio's progress during their time on the Board, we wish
them well in their future endeavours.»

-End-

For more information, please contact

Richard Godfrey
CEO, BerGenBio ASA
+47 917 86 304

Rune Skeie
CFO, BerGenBio ASA
+47 917 86 513

Media relations

Crux Advisers
Jan Petter Stiff
stiff@crux.no
+47 995 13 891

Consilium Strategic Communications
Mary-Jane Elliott, Chris Welsh, Jessica Hodgson, Nicholas Brown
bergenbio@consilium-comms.com
+44 20 3709 5700

Forward looking statements

This announcement may contain forward-looking statements, which as such are not
historical facts, but are based upon various assumptions, many of which are
based, in turn, upon further assumptions. These assumptions are inherently
subject to significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other
important factors. Such risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other important
factors could cause actual events to differ materially from the expectations
expressed or implied in this announcement by such forward-looking statements.

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5
-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.