iBio Appoints Dr. Richard M. Silver to Clinical Advisory Board

NEWARK, DE--(Marketwired - Jul 21, 2014) - iBio, Inc. (NYSE MKT: IBIO), a leading provider of plant-based biotechnology for developing and manufacturing biological products, has appointed Richard M. Silver, M.D. to its recently formed clinical advisory board.

Dr. Silver is one of the world's leaders in clinical care and investigation of systemic sclerosis and scleroderma-like conditions. He will provide iBio with guidance on further development and clinical trial design for the company's novel drug candidate for systemic sclerosis and other fibrotic diseases.

"The appointment of Dr. Silver as a clinical advisor bolsters our core team focused on scleroderma," said Terence Ryan, Ph.D., iBio's chief scientific officer. "Dr. Silver's deep experience in both research and clinical practice will help us apply positive results of laboratory work to a pragmatic clinical development program."

iBio is developing a novel therapeutic product for systemic sclerosis and other fibrotic diseases in collaboration with Dr. Carol Feghali-Bostwick at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). Data published in 2012 by Dr. Feghali-Bostwick demonstrate that specific endostatin-derived peptides are useful for both inhibition and reversal of fibrosis in preclinical mouse models of fibrosis as well as in human skin. iBio has produced the active pharmaceutical ingredient using its proprietary technology and has made clinical development of this promising product a key priority.

"I am glad to join the iBio team dedicated to the further development of Dr. Feghali-Bostwick's important research discoveries," said Dr. Silver. "I believe this program holds great promise for an effective fibrosis treatment."

Dr. Silver is the Distinguished University Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at the MUSC. His research interests center on scleroderma and, in particular, scleroderma lung disease, the leading cause of death among patients with scleroderma. He and his colleagues were the first to utilize bronchoalveolar lavage to characterize scleroderma lung disease. Dr. Silver played an instrumental role in the design and development of the Scleroderma Lung Study (SLS) and continues to serve as principal investigator for the SLS's Biological Samples Repository.

Dr. Silver helped to initiate and develop MUSC's Pulmonary Hypertension Center and was principal investigator of a Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Center for the Study of Rheumatic Diseases in African-Americans funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. He is the author of 145 peer-reviewed publications as well as numerous book chapters and more than 100 scientific abstracts.

About Systemic Sclerosis and Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Systemic sclerosis is a disorder that affects connective tissue of skin and internal organs as well as the walls of blood vessels. Early diagnosis and individualized therapy can be helpful, but treatment of systemic sclerosis is limited to symptom management. No currently approved drug has been proven to arrest the underlying process or processes that drive progression of the disease.

Organ fibrosis is responsible for health care costs exceeding $10 billion per year, and the number of deaths due to fibrosis is estimated to be double those due to cancer. Organ fibrosis is responsible for nearly half of deaths in developed countries and results in significant physical, emotional, and financial burdens as well. 

IPF is a life-shortening lung disease with a rapidly progressing negative impact on quality of life leading to death within an average of three to five years after diagnosis. IPF has a worse survival rate than most cancers except for pancreatic cancer and certain lung cancers.

According to GlobalData, the market across the U.S. and European Union for already existing IPF therapies is expected to grow from $49 million in 2012 to more than $1.1 billion by 2017.

About iBio, Inc.

iBio develops and offers proprietary products and product licenses, based on its proprietary iBioLaunch and iBioModulator™ platforms, providing collaborators full support for turn-key implementation of its technology for protein therapeutics and vaccines. In Brazil, iBio has been collaborating with Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology since 2011 to develop a recombinant yellow fever vaccine based upon iBio technology.

The iBioLaunch platform is a proprietary, transformative technology for development and production of biologics using transient gene expression in unmodified green plants. The iBioModulator platform is complementary to the iBioLaunch platform and designed to significantly improve vaccine products with both higher potency and greater duration of effect. The iBioModulator platform can be used with any recombinant expression technology for vaccine development and production. Further information is available at: www.ibioinc.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

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