UNITY Biotechnology Announces Appointment of Alicia Tozier as Chief Strategy Officer

SAN FRANCISCO, July 22, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- UNITY Biotechnology, Inc. (“UNITY”) [NASDAQ: UBX], a biotechnology company developing therapeutics to slow, halt or reverse diseases of aging, today announced the appointment of Alicia Tozier, MBA, as chief strategy officer. In this new role, she will develop and implement the company’s corporate and product strategies.

“Alicia’s impressive experience in ophthalmology product planning, commercial strategy, and scaling cross-functional teams will be instrumental in fortifying our strategies and capitalizing on the significant opportunity of UBX1325 to transform the treatment landscape for diabetic macular edema (DME),” said Anirvan Ghosh, Ph.D., chief executive officer of UNITY. “She has an outstanding track record of rapidly building and executing go-to-market strategies, including a record-breaking product launch in the ophthalmology space, which will be invaluable as we continue to advance our lead program through late-stage clinical development. I am confident that Alicia will help drive our strategic vision with operational excellence, ensuring we remain at the forefront of innovation in chronic and inflammatory diseases associated with aging."

Ms. Tozier brings 20 years of experience working in the pharma and medical device industry, including over a decade in the retinal disease space. To date, she has led 18 launches across eight therapeutic areas spanning 70 markets globally, while operationalizing numerous firsts at Genentech Pharmaceuticals (GNE), Astellas Pharmaceuticals and Baxter Healthcare. Prior to joining UNITY, Ms. Tozier was senior vice president at Outlook Therapeutics where she drove organizational activation and go to market, scaling multiple global functions for the pre-commercial biopharmaceutical company’s global entry. Previously, she was head of ophthalmology at GNE with US oversight for market access, marketing and specialty sales where she mobilized the company’s inaugural entry into the surgical market with PDS. In addition, she scaled a multi-functional faricimab team to achieve the fastest growing launch in anti-VEGF history, representing a top growth driver for GNE. Ms. Tozier also served as global leader for Astellas Pharmaceuticals and Baxter Healthcare building global new product planning strategies and organizational capabilities for novel paradigm shifting regenerative medicine and digital therapeutics, launching four platforms across 70+ markets. Ms. Tozier is a Stanford Graduate Business School Alumni, recently graduating from the Executive Leadership Program, and earned her MBA at Colorado State University and BA from the University of California Santa Barbara.

“It is exciting to see the advances that UNITY has made,” stated Ms. Tozier. “I believe the company is well positioned as it pivots into a late-stage clinical development organization. I’m delighted to join the leadership team to help shape the company’s strategic direction and broad potential of the product platform. With impressive clinical data to date, UBX1325 has a significant opportunity to bring a novel therapeutic to DME patients. I look forward to contributing to the success of this mission.”

About UNITY

UNITY is developing a new class of therapeutics to slow, halt, or reverse diseases of aging. UNITY’s current focus is on creating medicines to selectively eliminate or modulate senescent cells and thereby provide transformative benefit in age-related ophthalmologic and neurologic diseases. More information is available at  or follow us on  and .

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements including statements related to UNITY’s understanding of cellular senescence and the role it plays in diseases of aging, the potential for UNITY to develop therapeutics to slow, halt, or reverse diseases of aging, including for ophthalmologic and neurologic diseases, the potential for UNITY to successfully commence and complete clinical studies of UBX1325 for DME and other ophthalmologic diseases, the expected timing of enrollment and results of the clinical trials in UBX1325, and UNITY’s expectations regarding the sufficiency of its cash runway. These statements involve substantial known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements, including risks of delay or disruption of enrollment of patients in clinical trials, risks relating to the uncertainties inherent in the drug development process, and risks relating to UNITY’s understanding of senescence biology. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions, or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Actual results or events could differ materially from the plans, intentions and expectations disclosed in the forward-looking statements we make. The forward-looking statements in this press release represent our views as of the date of this release. We anticipate that subsequent events and developments will cause our views to change. However, while we may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we have no current intention of doing so except to the extent required by applicable law. You should, therefore, not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this release. For a further description of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, as well as risks relating to the business of the Company in general, see UNITY’s most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2024, filed with the Securities and Exchange on May 14, 2024, as well as other documents that may be filed by UNITY from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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