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MorphoSys Appoints Dr Arndt Schottelius as Chief Development Officer and Member of the Management Board


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MorphoSys AG (FSE: MOR; Prime Standard Segment, TecDAX) today appointed Dr Arndt Schottelius (42), as its first Chief Development Officer, responsible for coordinating the Group’s expanding therapeutic antibody development activities including pre-clinical and clinical drug development. Dr Schottelius joins MorphoSys from Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, where he served as the Director of Immunology, Tissue Growth & Repair Early Development and most recently as Medical Director, Immunology Development, directing late-stage clinical development studies for the anti-CD20 antibodies Rituximab and Ocrelizumab in rheumatoid arthritis. Prior to his position at Genentech, Dr Schottelius held science and management positions in immunology research at Berlex Biosciences, CA, USA, and Schering AG, Berlin, Germany. The appointment of Dr Schottelius will take effect on December 29, 2008.

“I am delighted to welcome Dr Schottelius to the management team of MorphoSys. He brings unique knowledge and a track record in drug development as well as profound management expertise from Genentech, the industry’s leading source of biopharmaceuticals, that will assist MorphoSys in achieving its pipeline growth plans over the coming years,” commented Dr Gerald Möller, Chairman of MorphoSys AG. “The ability to attract such a highly-experienced person to lead MorphoSys’s expanding development efforts underpins the attractiveness of MorphoSys as a drug developer. We see Dr Schottelius’s pharmaceutical experience from his time with Schering in Germany and the USA as also being invaluable to MorphoSys.”

“I’m excited about the prospect of working with the MorphoSys management team to build a strong therapeutic antibody pipeline,” says Dr Arndt Schottelius. “MorphoSys’s HuCAL technology platform is without doubt one of the best sources of antibody-based drugs in the industry. In addition to its extraordinary antibody-based expertise, the company has financial strength that sets it apart from many other companies in the biotechnology arena and a very international and innovative culture that has attracted me. I’m looking forward to putting my experience in antibody drug development to work for the benefit of the company.”

During his career Dr Schottelius has established a successful track record of advancing therapeutics from late stage research into clinical development. He has gathered extensive experience in discovery and in-licensing activities, portfolio management, pre-clinical and clinical development as well as FDA negotiations and regulatory filings. After medical studies in Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland Dr Schottelius received his PhD and MD degrees from the Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg, Germany. Subsequently he practiced medicine as a resident physician in gastroenterology at the Charité University Hospital, Berlin, Germany, and held a research fellowship from the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before moving into the pharmaceutical industry.

MorphoSys is a publicly traded biotechnology company focused on the generation of fully human antibodies as a means to discover and develop innovative antibody-based drugs against life-threatening diseases. MorphoSys’s goal is to establish HuCAL as the technology of choice for antibody generation in research, diagnostics and therapeutic applications. The Company currently has therapeutic and research alliances with the majority of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies including Boehringer Ingelheim, Centocor/Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Pfizer and Roche. Within these partnerships, more than 50 therapeutic antibody programs are ongoing in which MorphoSys participates through exclusive license and milestones payments as well as royalties on any end products. Additionally, MorphoSys is active in the antibody research market through its AbD Serotec business unit. The business unit has operations in Germany (Munich), the U.S. (Raleigh, NC) and U.K. (Oxford). For further information please visit http://www.morphosys.com/

HuCAL® and HuCAL GOLD® are registered trademarks of MorphoSys AG

This communication contains certain forward-looking statements concerning the MorphoSys group of companies. The forward-looking statements contained herein represent the judgment of MorphoSys as of the date of this release and involve risks and uncertainties. Should actual conditions differ from the Company’s assumptions, actual results and actions may differ from those anticipated. MorphoSys does not intend to update any of these forward-looking statements as far as the wording of the relevant press release is concerned.



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