NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rasna Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCQX:RASP), is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Kunwar Shailubhai as Chief Executive Officer.

“We are delighted to welcome Kunwar into this role,” said Dr. Alessandro Padova, Chairman of Rasna Therapeutics, “He brings more than 25 years of experience within the life science industry, combined with a distinguished track record of success in translating drugs from concept through commercialization to market.”

“Rasna’s focus on addressing the high unmet need that exists is a pressing challenge, with more than ten thousand deaths annually in the United States from acute myeloid leukemia,” commented Dr. Shailubhai, “I look forward to taking on this challenge and progressing the powerful therapeutic approaches that Rasna has developed, which engage novel understanding of key mechanisms at the heart of disease biology.”

Dr. Shailubhai, who was formally appointed on April 14th, was a co-founder and served as the Chief Scientific Officer and prior Senior Vice President, Drug Discovery, of Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:SGYP) from 2004, where he led the development of Trulance™ from inception to FDA approval, having co-invented and pioneered Synergy’s platform technology surrounding the therapeutic applications of guanylate cyclase C agonists for functional GI disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, GI cancer, cholesterol lowering, asthma and other lung diseases.

Between 1993 and 2000, he was with Monsanto Company, serving as Research Specialist and Group Leader of the cancer chemoprevention group. Dr. Shailubhai previously served as a Senior Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, and as an Assistant Professor of Research at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Shailubhai received his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Baroda, India, and his MBA from the University of Missouri, St. Louis. He has more than 20 issued patents and over 40 peer-reviewed publications.

About Rasna Therapeutics, Inc. (www.rasna.com)

Rasna Therapeutics, Inc. is a development stage biotechnology company focused primarily on the high unmet need that exists for leukemias. Rasna’s primary indication is acute myeloid leukemia (AML) which may be fatal within weeks to months, has a 5-year survival rate of only about 25% and very poor prospects for long-term survival of patients. The company’s clinical program is focused on three druggable intervention points with potential to improve safety and efficacy of current AML combination therapies, around which is has robust IP and substantial freedom to operate: RASP-101, an established anticancer therapeutic for treating nucleophosmin (NPM1) mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML); RASP-201, an inhibitor of lysine specific histone demethylase 1 (LSD1 or KDM1A), which is overexpressed in several human cancers including AML plays an important role in epigenetic modification that contributes to cellular proliferation; and, RASP-301, high affinity, NPM1 binding molecules exhibiting selective cytotoxic activity on AML cells.