Nxera Pharma Appoints Experienced Senior Strategy Consultant Patrick Branch as Head of Business Development for Japan and APAC

Tokyo, Japan and Cambridge, UK, 3 April 2024 - Nxera Pharma (“Nxera” or “the Company”; TSE: 4565) – formerly known as Sosei Group or Sosei Heptares – today announces the appointment of Japan pharmaceutical sector expert, Mr. Patrick Branch, as Head of Business Development for Japan and the APAC region. Mr. Branch will join Nxera’s global Business Development team that is led by Dr. Marcus Messenger. He will be based in Nxera’s Tokyo office and will oversee Japan and regional disease area strategy, search and evaluation, and transaction activities.

Previously a Partner and senior member of the global life sciences practice at L.E.K. Consulting, a global strategy consulting firm, and co-head and representative director of L.E.K.’s Japan office, Mr. Branch brings extensive industry experience from directing strategic consulting projects for L.E.K.'s biopharma, medtech, healthcare and private equity clients. He has advised many executive teams across hundreds of engagements in Japan, APAC and the US on a range of business-critical issues, including growth strategy, business development and M&A, commercial strategy and operations, pricing and market access, and organizational design.

Mr. Branch holds an MBA from INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France) and a Masters of Public Health (MPH) from Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health (New York, USA).  He also holds degrees from the University of Nottingham (Nottingham, UK) and SOAS, University of London (London, UK).

Chris Cargill, CEO and President of Nxera Pharma, commented: “I’m delighted to welcome Patrick to the business development team at Nxera. This important appointment further demonstrates our commitment to advancing and growing our integrated Japan pharma business to develop and deliver more life-changing medicines for patients in the large and rapidly growing Japan and APAC markets. We believe both the challenges to and the lag in gaining new drug approvals in these markets represent major opportunities for our business for which we are strategically well positioned.”

Patrick Branch, Head of Business Development for Japan and APAC at Nxera Pharma, added: “Nxera is an emerging leader in the Japanese biopharma sector, and I am honored to be joining the Company at such a pivotal time. I look forward to contributing my experience to build on the existing strong foundations to drive growth and new opportunities for the business in Japan and APAC where, with our lean, go-to-market commercial model, we are well positioned to scale rapidly and generate significant value for patients and our major stakeholders.”

About Nxera Pharma

Nxera Pharma (formerly Sosei Heptares) is a technology powered biopharma company, in pursuit of new specialty medicines to improve the lives of patients with unmet needs in Japan and globally.

In addition to several products being commercialized in Japan, we are advancing an extensive pipeline of over 30 active programs from discovery through to late clinical stage internally and in partnership with leading pharma and biotech companies. This pipeline is focused on addressing major unmet needs in some of the fastest-growing areas of medicine across neurology, GI and immunology, metabolic disorders and rare diseases, and leverages the power of our unique and industry leading GPCR-targeted structure-based drug discovery “NxWave^TM” platform to provide a sustainable source of best- or first-in-class candidates.

Nxera employs over 350 talented people at key locations in Tokyo and Osaka (Japan), London and Cambridge (UK), Basel (Switzerland) and Seoul (South Korea) and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (ticker: 4565).

For more information, please visit www.nxera.life

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