Akcea Therapeutics Announces New Appointments to its Board of Directors - Seite 2

Ms. Yanni was vice president and chief licensing officer at Merck & Co. from November 2001 until her retirement in March 2014. Prior to this, she served in various roles at Merck including in corporate development, finance and tax. Ms. Yanni currently serves on the Board of Directors of Trevena, Inc., Vaccinex, Inc. and ABIONYX Pharma, all public biotechnology companies. She earned a J.D. from Stanford Law School and an A.B. from Wellesley College and masters of law in taxation from New York University.

“Barbara is highly regarded for her strong business background, deep knowledge of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and extensive business development background. She will play a central role in helping us achieve our business objectives in the years ahead and we are pleased to welcome her to our board,” Dr. McDevitt added.

With the addition of Ms. Yanni, Akcea has now increased the authorized number of members of the Board to 10 and increased the number of independent board members from six to seven.

ABOUT AKCEA THERAPEUTICS, INC.
Akcea Therapeutics, Inc., an affiliate of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:IONS), is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing drugs to treat patients with serious and rare diseases. Akcea is commercializing TEGSEDI (inotersen) and WAYLIVRA (volanesorsen) as well as advancing a mature pipeline of novel drugs, including AKCEA-APO(a)-L_Rx, AKCEA-ANGPTL3-L_Rx, AKCEA-APOCIII-L_Rx, and AKCEA-TTR-L_Rx, with the potential to treat multiple diseases. All six drugs were discovered by Ionis, a leader in antisense therapeutics, and are based on Ionis’ proprietary antisense technology. TEGSEDI is approved in the U.S., E.U. and Canada. WAYLIVRA is approved in the E.U. and is currently in Phase 3 clinical development for the treatment of people with familial partial lipodystrophy, or FPL. Akcea is building the infrastructure to commercialize its drugs globally. Akcea is a global company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Additional information about Akcea is available at www.akceatx.com and you can follow us on twitter at @akceatx.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENT

This press release includes forward-looking statements regarding the business of Akcea Therapeutics, Inc. Any statement describing Akcea’s goals, expectations, financial or other projections, intentions or beliefs, including the commercial potential of Akcea’s drugs in development is a forward-looking statement and should be considered an at-risk statement. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, particularly those inherent in the process of discovering, developing and commercializing drugs that are safe and effective for use as human therapeutics, and in the endeavor of building a business around such drugs. Akcea’s forward-looking statements also involve assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove correct, could cause its results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although Akcea’s forward-looking statements reflect the good faith judgment of its management, these statements are based only on facts and factors currently known by Akcea. As a result, you are cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These and other risks concerning Akcea’s programs are described in additional detail in Akcea’s quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and annual reports on Form 10-K, which are on file with the SEC. Copies of these and other documents are available from the company.