OncXerna Therapeutics Appoints C. Evan Ballantyne as Chief Financial Officer

WALTHAM, Mass., Aug. 17, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — OncXerna Therapeutics, Inc. (“OncXerna”), a precision medicine company using an innovative RNA-expression based biomarker platform to predict patient responses to its targeted oncology therapies, today announced the appointment of Evan Ballantyne as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

“Evan’s extensive executive experience at both medical technology companies and those developing novel drug candidates makes him an ideal fit as OncXerna’s CFO,” said Laura Benjamin, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer at OncXerna. “His impressive track record and expertise in financial strategy and business development will be invaluable as we work to advance our pipeline and Xerna™ platform. I’m thrilled to welcome Evan to OncXerna and look forward to working together.”

Mr. Ballantyne has over 27 years of executive experience and spent the last 19 years as a CFO in the healthcare industry. He was most recently the CFO of Orchestra Biomed, Inc., where he facilitated the closings of two equity financing rounds with collective proceeds of $57 million and assisted with the development of a global partnership valued at more than $200 million. Prior to his time at Orchestra Biomed, Inc., Mr. Ballantyne was the CFO of Cerecin, Inc., an Alzheimer’s disease-focused company backed by Nestlé Health Science, and Executive Vice President and CFO of Clinical Data, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company that was acquired by Forest Laboratories, Inc. (now, Allergan) for $1.6 billion. He also served as the CFO of the microbiome-focused company Synthetic Biologics, Inc., and the CFO of the immuno-oncology company Agenus, Inc., where he helped monetize a GlaxoSmithKline plc royalty stream for gross proceeds of $115 million. In addition to these roles, Mr. Ballantyne also previously served as the CFO of the medtech companies Avedro, Inc. and ZymeQuest, Inc., the CFO of the software company Knowledge Impact, Inc., and the CFO and Chief Operating Officer of ACNielsen Corporation. Mr. Ballantyne holds a B.A. in History and Political Science from the University of Western Ontario and a post-graduate degree in Business Administration from the University of Windsor.

Mr. Ballantyne commented, “This is an exciting time to be joining OncXerna. The Company has compelling clinical and biomarker data that highlight the power of the Xerna™ platform and its ability to identify the patients most likely to respond to OncXerna’s targeted oncology therapies. I am eager to begin working with my talented new colleagues and believe our complementary skill sets will serve us well as we strive to advance precision medicine for cancer patients using our unique RNA expression-based biomarker approach.”

About OncXerna Therapeutics

OncXerna is an oncology therapeutics company with an innovative precision medicine platform, the Xerna™ platform. The Xerna™ platform leverages artificial intelligence technologies to build RNA expression-based biomarker panels that capture the driving biology of an individual tumor in an effort to enable a diagnostic hypothesis for matching patients with drugs targeted to their particular tumor biology. Our current clinical pipeline and first Xerna™ Panel targets the tumor microenvironment. Our mission is to expand the reach of precision medicine beyond the limited options currently available to address the urgent needs of patients with cancer. By integrating our novel Xerna™ platform with our deep expertise in clinical development, we believe we can accelerate the development of our novel therapeutics and bring meaningful new treatments to patients at an earlier point in time in their disease progression.  For more information, please visit oncxerna.com, or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Investor and Media Contact:

Ashley R. Robinson
LifeSci Partners, LLC
arr@lifesciadvisors.com