Opexa Appoints Dr. Pittenger to Scientific Advisory Board

The Woodlands, TX -- Opexa Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPXA) has named Mark Pittenger, Ph.D, to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Dr. Pittenger, who was Vice President, Research, and part of the senior management team at Osiris Therapeutics, Inc. until 2005, is a pioneer in the stem cell and regenerative medicine fields.

He currently serves as a consultant to companies developing cellular therapeutics, including stem cell technologies. He is a Senior Director at Life Sciences Technologies Partners, and an adjunct Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

David B. McWilliams, CEO of Opexa, stated, "We are very pleased to have a scientist of Mark's caliber join our Scientific Advisory Board. Not only has he conducted breakthrough scientific work in the area of stem cell therapeutics, but his experience spans many disciplines including intellectual property, product development and regulatory issues of cellular therapeutics."

"Mark is a leader in his field and we are eager to have him contribute his insight to our growing pre-clinical and clinical efforts for our autologous T-cell and stem cell platforms."

At Osiris, Dr. Pittenger led efforts in the isolation, characterization, and differentiation of the multipotential stem cells found in adult bone marrow commonly know as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). His research led to key developments in the field of MSCs, including identifying key conditions for adipogenic differentiation of MSCs, careful analysis of chondrogenic differentiation and understanding of the intracellular signaling pathway leading to osteogenic differentiation. This work led to many of the assays that are used in MSC product development. The key paper on clonally derived MSCs that established that MSCs were multipotent, rather than a collection of progenitor cells, was published by Dr. Pittenger in Science in 1999. This work has been cited in over 2000 reviewed publications to date.

Dr. Pittenger holds five issued U.S. patents (two pending) relating to stem cells.

Recently, Dr. Pittenger was Visiting Professor in the Division of Cardiology/Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University (2005 to 2007). Prior to joining Osiris, he was a staff associate at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School and performed post-doctoral research at Yale University.

Other members of Opexa's SAB are: Norman Barton, M.D., Ph.D., chief executive officer of Sirogenesis, Inc.; Shelly Heimfeld, Ph.D., director of the Stem Cell Program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle; Eliezer Huberman, Ph.D., chief executive officer, NovaDrug, LLC; Daniel R. Marshak, Ph.D., vice president - chief scientific officer for PerkinElmer and Dr. Jingwu Zhang, professor of Neurology and Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine and scientific director of the Baylor-Methodist Multiple Sclerosis Center in Houston.

About Opexa Therapeutics

Opexa Therapeutics develops and commercializes cell therapies to treat autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes. The Company is focused on autologous cellular therapy applications of its proprietary T-cell and stem cell therapies. The Company's lead product, Tovaxin(TM), a T-cell therapy for multiple sclerosis is in Phase IIb trials. The Company holds the exclusive worldwide license for adult multipotent stem cells derived from mononuclear cells of peripheral blood. The technology allows large quantities of monocyte derived stem cells to be produced efficiently for use in autologous therapy, thus circumventing the threat of rejection. The Company is in preclinical development for diabetes mellitus. For more information, visit the Opexa Therapeutics Web site.