SUNRISE, Fla., Nov. 5, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bioheart, Inc. (Nasdaq:BHRT) announced today two key appointments to its leadership team including a new vice president of sales and marketing and a new board member. Matt Fendrich has joined the company as Vice President of Sales & Marketing. Mr. Fendrich was previously Senior Product Sales Executive for Siemens Medical where he helped lead Siemens’ entryway into cardiology accounts here in the United States. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Marketing for PSS World Medical, Inc. (Physician Sales & Service), having been with the firm for 12 years. As vice president with PSS, he was responsible for 52 branch managers and 850 sales representatives nationwide. Mr. Fendrich has a BS in Economics from Florida State University. At Bioheart, Mr. Fendrich will immediately begin leading the sales launch of the Bioheart 3370 Heart Failure Monitor and the Bioheart-Monebo Cardiobelt(tm) Arrhythmia and A-Fib Remote Monitoring System in the United States.
On October 22, 2008, the company also appointed Alan P. Timmins to serve as a member of its Board of Directors until the Company’s 2009 Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until his successor is duly elected and qualified. The addition of Mr. Timmins brings the Board’s membership to eight. Mr. Timmins was also appointed to the Audit Committee of the Board effective as of the same date. Mr. Timmins is a seasoned biotechnology executive having previously served as President of AVI BioPharma from 2000 to 2008. During his career, Mr. Timmins helped raise more than $250 million of capital. He has a BBA in Accounting and Management from the University of Portland and an MBA from Stanford University.
“Bioheart continues to seek out the best and brightest to join our organization,” said Howard J. Leonhardt, Chairman, CEO and CTO of Bioheart. “These recent new additions to our team are designed to assist us in transitioning from being a development-stage, research-focused company to being a profitable commercial enterprise. Matt brings solid sales leadership experience. He has beaten nearly every sales goal set for him in his career. He has a goal at Bioheart to achieve more than $20 million in sales in 2009. Alan Timmins has a great track record at raising capital in the biotech/medtech field.”
About Bioheart, Inc.:
Bioheart, Inc. (Nasdaq:BHRT) is committed to delivering intelligent devices and biologics that help monitor, diagnose and treat heart failure and cardiovascular diseases. Its goals are to improve a patient’s quality of life and reduce health care costs and hospitalizations. Specific to biotechnology, Bioheart is focused on the discovery, development and, subject to regulatory approval, commercialization of autologous cell therapies for the treatment of chronic and acute heart damage. Its lead product candidate, MyoCell(r), is an innovative clinical muscle-derived stem cell therapy designed to populate regions of scar tissue within a patient’s heart with new living cells for the purpose of improving cardiac function in chronic heart failure patients. The Company’s pipeline includes multiple product candidates for the treatment of heart damage, including Bioheart Acute Cell Therapy, an autologous, adipose tissue-derived stem cell treatment for acute heart damage, and MyoCell(r) SDF-1, a therapy utilizing autologous cells that are genetically modified to express additional potentially therapeutic growth proteins. For more information on Bioheart, visit www.bioheartinc.com.
MyoCell and MyoCell SDF-1 are trademarks of Bioheart, Inc.
Forward-Looking Statements:
Except for historical matters contained herein, statements made in this press release are forward-looking and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, words such as “may”, “will”, “to”, “plan”, “expect”, “believe”, “anticipate”, “intend”, “could”, “would”, “estimate”, or “continue” or the negative other variations thereof or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
Investors and others are cautioned that a variety of factors, including certain risks, may affect our business and cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. These risk factors include, without limitation, (i) our ability to secure additional financing; (ii) the timely success and completion of our clinical trials; (iii) the occurrence of any unacceptable side effects during or after preclinical and clinical testing of our product candidates; (iv) regulatory approval of our product candidates; (v) our dependence on the success of our lead product candidate; (vi) our inability to predict the extent of our future losses or if or when we will become profitable; (vii) our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; and (viii) intense competition. The Company is also subject to the risks and uncertainties described in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the section entitled “Risk Factors” in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, as amended by Amendment No. 1 on Form 10-K/A and its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2008 and June 30, 2008.
This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com
CONTACT: Bioheart, Inc William Kline, Chief Financial Officer (954) 835-1500 Monebo, Inc Patrick Kothe, Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer (512) 732-0235 x112 RedChip Companies, Inc. Bioheart Investor Relations: Len Hardison (800) REDCHIP (733-2447), Ext. 118 [email protected]
Comments