Loic Maurel Joins Exonhit Therapeutics to Become CEO

PARIS, June 4/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ExonHit Therapeutics, a drug and diagnostic company, today
announces that Loic Maurel, M.D., will join ExonHit Therapeutics on July 1st
as Chief Operating Officer. At the next meeting of the Supervisory Board, he
will be appointed CEO (President du Directoire).

Laurent Condomine, Chairman of the Supervisory Board,
commented: "We are delighted to have Loic Maurel joining ExonHit
Therapeutics. His experience and track record in major as well as in
biopharmaceutical companies, both in Europe and in North America, combined
with his leadership qualities, will be of great value going into the future.
Together with the newly formed Management Board, the ExonHit leadership team
will focus on accelerating the Company's transformation from an R&D driven
organization into a market and commercially driven company enabling ExonHit
to meet its ultimate goal of providing therapeutic and diagnostic solutions
in chronic diseases, in an effective and timely fashion."

Prior to joining ExonHit and since 2001, Loic Maurel served as
President and CEO of Debiovision Inc. in Canada, a Pharmaceutical Development
Company focusing on the development of innovative therapeutics for unmet
medical needs. During his tenure, he acquired clinical and regulatory
experience with FDA and EMEA exposures, filing an NDA in the United States,
Canada, France, and Switzerland. He also led several licensing and
acquisition activities in North America, Europe, and Asia. From 1999 to 2001,
Loic Maurel was Vice President Marketing and Specialty Business of Novartis
Canada. He successfully launched several products and increased sales as a
result of the restructuring of the Marketing and Sales organization. Prior to
this, he was Global Marketing Head for the Cardiovascular, Metabolism and
Respiratory Therapeutic Area at Novartis Headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.
He was responsible for the worldwide launch of Diovan, the number one product
of Novartis. He previously held various marketing and sales positions with
progressive responsibilities at Novartis and Rhone-Poulenc (now
sanofi-aventis) in France. He received his M.D. degree from the University of
Bordeaux, France. Loic Maurel was Chairman of the Board of Oncomab GmbH as
well as Board member of Debiovision Inc., Avance Pharma Inc., and of the
BIOQuebec Association.

"I am very excited about the opportunity to lead the ExonHit
Therapeutics team at this very important time for the Company. ExonHit
Therapeutics is in an extremely strong position to translate its many
opportunities coming from its unique discovery engine into successfully
marketed commercial products," said Dr. Maurel. "I also look forward to
working with Exonhit's licensing partners, bioMerieux, Allergan and others as
well as forming strong relationships with the investment community." he
concluded.

About ExonHit Therapeutics

http://www.exonhit.com

ExonHit Therapeutics is the world's leader in the analysis of
alternative RNA splicing, a process which when deregulated plays a key role
in the onset of various diseases.

ExonHit has a multi-component commercial strategy to capture
the maximum value from its leadership in alternative splicing. The Company is
already generating revenues from a new generation of microarrays,
SpliceArrayTM family of products that enable life science researchers to
detect crucial disease-associated information. These products are marketed
worldwide in conjunction with Agilent and Affymetrix. In the field of
diagnostics, ExonHit has a major collaboration with bioMerieux to develop
completely novel predictive blood-based cancer diagnostics, which could play
a key role in improving the treatment of breast cancer and other major
cancers and develops its own projects for the detection of other chronic
diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or atherosclerosis.

In parallel, ExonHit is developing its own therapeutic
pipeline in the field of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. The Company
has advanced drug candidates into clinical trials and is evaluating several
promising pre-clinical compounds. ExonHit also has a strategic partnership
with Allergan, to discover and develop new therapeutics in the areas of pain,
neurological diseases and ophthalmology. This collaboration provides on-going
research funding to ExonHit.

Founded in 1997, ExonHit is headquartered in Paris, France and
has a U.S. facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The Company is listed on
Alternext of Euronext Paris (ticker: ALEHT; ISIN: FR0004054427) since
November 17, 2005.

This press release includes only summary information and does
not purport to be comprehensive. The projections, forecast and estimates of
ExonHit Therapeutics which may be contained herein are for illustrative
purposes only and are based on management's current views and assumptions.
Such projections, forecast and estimates involve known and unknown risks and
uncertainties, as described at Section 4.2 "Facteurs de risque" (Risk
Factors) of the Document de Base available on ExonHit Therapeutics' website
(www.exonhit.com), that may cause actual results, performance or events to
differ materially from those anticipated in the summary information.

In addition, ExonHit Therapeutics, its shareholders, and its
affiliates, directors, officers, advisors and employees have not verified the
accuracy of, and make no representations or warranties in relation to,
statistical data or predictions contained in this press release that were
taken or derived from third party sources or industry publications, and such
statistical data and predictions are used in this press release for
information purposes only.

Finally, this press release may be drafted in the French and
English languages. In an event of differences between the texts, the French
language version shall prevail.

Source: ExonHit Therapeutics SA

Contacts: ExonHit Therapeutics, Philippe Rousseau, C.F.O. and acting CEO, Tel: +33-1-58-05-47-00, philippe.rousseau@exonhit.com

2008-06-04 02:02:01 0376831 PRNEWSWIRE