Trana Discovery Taps Pharmaceutical Industry Veteran Frank Johnson to Lead Sales and Marketing

Company develops tools to find new treatments for serious infectious diseases…

CARY, NC (February 25, 2009) – Trana Discovery, Inc., a drug discovery technology company, today announced that Frank Johnson, a 33-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, has joined the company as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Frank joins a team of former industry executives who are developing assays that help companies find novel classes of drugs for the treatment of serious viral, fungal, and bacterial infectious diseases. The technology identifies compounds that work through a unique mechanism of action: inhibition of the target pathogen’s ability to use transfer RNA (tRNA) essential for protein synthesis or replication.

Frank has over 33 years of pharmaceutical experience in roles as diverse as Hospital Pharmacist to Director of Marketing. He began his career as a retail and hospital pharmacist in the Oklahoma City area. While at Eli Lilly and Company, Frank served as sales representative and associate product manager for various products including Oral and Injectible Antibiotics before joining Glaxo in 1982. At Glaxo and GlaxoWellcome, he held numerous sales, product management and marketing positions with a focus in health systems, corporate health and emerging therapeutic areas. Frank managed marketing and research programs for several key brands including Fortaz, Zofran, Zyban, Imitrex, and Relenza.

“Trana is most fortunate to attract such a high-quality individual,” said Steve Peterson, CEO of Trana Discovery. “With assays ready for licensing now and others in the future, our business will benefit from Frank’s expertise in communicating the impact that novel classes of anti-infectives can make for both organizations and patients needing new antibiotics for emerging resistant pathogens.”

Trana recently perfected its high-throughput HIV drug discovery assay in a collaborative effort with Southern Research. The Trana HIV 201 assay is capable of identifying compounds that interfere with the use of tRNA by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of AIDS. An HTS assay for Staphylococcus aureus bacteria is currently under development. Organizations interested in licensing either assay should contact Trana at info@tranadiscovery.com or by calling 866-390-3452 (toll free) or +1-919-342-6192.

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