Ascentage Pharma, a global clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on apoptosis-targeted drug discovery and development, today announced that Yingjie (Jason) Huang, M.D., will join the company as Senior Vice President of Clinical Development. Dr. Huang will join Ascentage's senior executive team and will take responsibility for the global development of Ascentage's oncology programs.

Dr. Huang has over twenty years of clinical cancer research and drug development experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and academic institution. Prior to joining Ascentage, he served as Senior Medical Director in Global Clinical Development at Novartis, responsible for BRAF/MEK project clinical strategy and clinical development. He actively led clinical projects of Tafinlar/ Mekinist in combination with immunotherapy and targeted therapies at all stages of development. Dr. Huang had also worked in Global Clinical Development as Senior Medical Director and Medical Director at GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol Myer Squibb, respectively. He played a leading role in multiple pivotal global Phase II/III trials in oncology. He contributed to the regulatory approval and life-cycle management for Erbitux, Tykerb in the US or EU, and led the global clinical development activities of brivanib in HCC. Besides the global roles, Dr. Huang had worked as Medical Advisor in Asia Pacific region at Novartis, he is responsible for the regional clinical development and medical affair activities for Glivec, Femara, Sandostain, and Afinitor. He involved in establishment of clinical research organization and updating skill levels of medical team across Asia Pacific region to enable participation in global development studies and initiation of regional and local clinical studies. Before joining industry, Dr. Huang had been an oncology research fellow at Chinese University of Hong Kong and Queen's University in Canada, he had also practiced as physician in oncology at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center for six years. Dr. Huang received an M.D. degree from Medical School of Sun Yat-sen University and a Master degree in Clinical Epidemiology from Queen's University in Canada.

"I am thrilled to welcome Jason to join Ascentage family. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in oncology drug development." said Yifan Zhai, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer of Ascentage, "Jason's leadership in clinical development and translational medicine will be instrumental for us to advance our oncology/hematology pipeline on a global basis."

"I am very much impressed by Ascentage's science-driven culture and its grit in tackling the once undruggable Protein-Protein Interaction targets," said Dr. Huang. "It is more than exciting to join Ascentage as the company is emerging fast into a global biotech. I look forward to working closely with my passionate colleagues and dedicating my expertise and experience to developing transformational therapeutics for patients worldwide."

About Ascentage Pharma

Ascentage Pharma is a global, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, dedicated to discovery and development of "first-in-class" and "best-in-class" small-molecule targeted therapeutics for addressing unmet medical needs in cancers, hepatitis B and age-related diseases. Ascentage has world-leading proprietary Protein-Protein Interaction drug discovery technologies and holds over 100 international patents. Ascentage currently has six small molecule drugs in phase I-II trials in US, Australia and Chinaand additional programs in preclinical stages.

The established R&D pipeline of Ascentage includes the inhibitors to a number of key proteins, including IAP, Bcl-2/Bcl-xL and MDM2-p53, that regulate a tumor cell's programmed cell death program; 2nd and/or 3rd generation of kinase inhibitors that overcome mutant resistance in cancer therapy; and inhibitors of epigenetics. For more information, please visit www.ascentagepharma.com.