OREANDA-NEWS. Abzena plc (AIM:ABZA), a life sciences company providing services and technologies that enable the development of biopharmaceutical products, announces the appointment of Dr Jim Mills as Vice President, Technical Operations.

Jim will be a member of Abzena's Executive Management Team, reporting to John Burt, CEO. In this new position he will take a lead role in the development of the Group's strategy to support its partners' access to Abzena's technologies for biopharmaceutical development, as well as providing support for the commercial activities of the group.

Jim was most recently the CEO of Cantab Biopharmaceuticals, which he joined in 1997, initially to work in process development. He took on roles with increasing levels of responsibility in biopharmaceutical manufacturing before becoming Director of Operations following the acquisition of Cantab by Xenova in 2007 and became CEO in 2010 when the company was taken over by Celtic Pharma Holdings.

"We are delighted to welcome Jim to Abzena and I look forward to working with him as the Company continues its commercial and corporate development," said John Burt, CEO of Abzena.

About Abzena

Abzena provides proprietary technologies and complementary services to enable the development of better biopharmaceuticals. The Group comprises PolyTherics and Antitope which have established a broad suite of services and technologies that are designed to improve the chances of successful development of antibodies and proteins with enhanced therapeutic benefits.

Antitope provides immunogenicity assessment, protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins, and cell line development for manufacture.

PolyTherics specializes in proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies for antibody drug conjugate development and solutions for optimization of the therapeutic properties of biopharmaceuticals.

The Group has built a global customer base over the past decade which includes the majority of the top 20 biopharmaceutical companies, many large and small biotech companies, and academic groups.

Abzena is quoted on the AIM segment of the London Stock Exchange under the symbol ABZA.