Peninsula Pharmaceuticals Inc announced that the Company's Board of Directors has elected Paul F. Truex Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective immediately. Truex becomes the Company's first CEO and will continue to hold the position of President.

"Peninsula has a very bright future and Paul is the best person to lead the Company," said Eckard Weber, Venture Partner of Domain Associates and a member of Peninsula's Board of Directors. "Paul has built a solid team dedicated to the development of anti-infective therapies and guided the acquisition of the Company's first in-licensed product. The Board feels that Paul's vision and leadership will continue to drive Peninsula's success."

"I am honored to have been selected as Peninsula's first CEO. As a young company striving to move our products on to the market while expanding our portfolio, Peninsula will continue to seek the best in ourselves and our partners," said Paul F. Truex, Chief Executive Officer and President of Peninsula Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Truex brings a broad range of pharmaceutical experience to Peninsula Pharmaceuticals, Inc including marketing, sales, product development, and business development. He joined Peninsula from Versicor Inc, where he was Vice President of Commercial Development. Prior to Versicor, Truex worked at Eli Lilly and Company in a number of positions and across several disease areas including infectious disease. While at Lilly, he participated in the launch of three products for the primary care physician market and held several sales and marketing roles. His business development experience includes joint ventures, product divestitures and numerous small research collaborations. Prior to entering the pharmaceutical industry, Truex worked in the electronics industry where he had his first exposure to effective commercial relationships with Japan. Truex obtained his MBA in marketing and finance from Indiana University and a BA in International Economics from the University of Waterloo.

Peninsula recently announced a licensing agreement with Shionogi & Co., Ltd for doripenem (also known as S-4661), a broad-spectrum antibiotic currently being studied in worldwide clinical trials. The worldwide hospital antibacterial market exceeds $8 billion annually and the worldwide market for carbapenems (a member of the well known beta-lactam class of antibiotics) is close to $1 billion and growing. By 2006, the carbapenem market is expected to grow by 50 percent due to the ever-increasing need for safe, powerful, broad-spectrum antibiotics to treat increasingly difficult and serious hospital infections.