Akcea Appoints Tracy Palmer Berns as Chief Compliance Officer

BOSTON, June 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Akcea Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKCA), a majority-owned affiliate of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., today announced that Tracy Palmer Berns has joined the company as chief compliance officer. In this role, Ms. Berns will be responsible for the company's ongoing compliance program focusing on policy development and training. She will also collaborate with other members of the executive team to provide strategic counsel related to development of business goals and compliance matters related to Akcea's commercial products and investigational therapies.

"With Tracy's extensive compliance and legal expertise, she will help inform and continually evolve our focus and commitment to ethical business practices. During this exciting time at Akcea, when we are building new levels of momentum with our commercialization strategies and development programs, Tracy is an important addition to the leadership team," said Alex Howarth, chief operating officer at Akcea.

Before Akcea, Ms. Berns served as vice president, chief compliance officer and legal affairs at AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where she was responsible for the company's compliance program and therapeutic product legal team and provided legal advice on regulatory, development, pharmacovigilance and quality matters. From 2005-2017 she held various roles at Medtronic (formerly Covidien), ultimately serving as vice president, ethics and compliance in the Minimally Invasive Therapies Group, a $30 billion division of the company.

She has also served as regulatory manager of the EP division at C.R. Bard, regulatory affairs manager and staff attorney at ABIOMED, senior consultant at EXPERTech and associate general counsel at Thermo Electron Corporation. Ms. Berns received her law degree from Columbia University School of Law and her bachelor's degree from Knox College in Illinois.

"I am pleased to join Akcea as the company continues to make progress in building its commercialization and product portfolio while expanding its commitment to serving rare disease populations who are in desperate need of treatment options," said Ms. Berns. "I look forward to joining with the leadership team in their important goal to bring promising therapies to address significant areas of unmet need in global health."

ABOUT AKCEA THERAPEUTICS, INC.
Akcea Therapeutics, Inc., a majority-owned affiliate of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: IONS), is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing medicines to treat patients with serious and rare diseases. Akcea is commercializing TEGSEDI^® (inotersen) and WAYLIVRA^® (volanesorsen), as well as advancing a mature pipeline of novel medicines, including AKCEA-APO(a)-L_Rx, vupanorsen (AKCEA-ANGPTL3-L_Rx), AKCEA-APOCIII-L_Rx, and AKCEA-TTR-L_Rx, with the potential to treat multiple diseases. All six medicines were discovered by Ionis, a leader in antisense therapeutics, and are based on Ionis' proprietary antisense technology. TEGSEDI is approved in the U.S., E.U., Canada and Brazil, and WAYLIVRA is approved in the E.U. Akcea is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and is building the infrastructure to commercialize its medicines globally. Additional information about Akcea is available at www.akceatx.com and you can follow the Company on Twitter at @akceatx. 

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENT
This press release includes forward-looking statements regarding the business of Akcea Therapeutics, Inc. Any statement describing Akcea's goals, expectations, financial or other projections, intentions or beliefs, including the commercial potential of Akcea's medicines in development is a forward-looking statement and should be considered an at-risk statement. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, particularly those inherent in the process of discovering, developing and commercializing medicines that are safe and effective for use as human therapeutics, and in the endeavor of building a business around such medicines. Akcea's forward-looking statements also involve assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove correct, could cause its results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although Akcea's forward-looking statements reflect the good faith judgment of its management, these statements are based only on facts and factors currently known by Akcea. In particular, we caution you that our forward-looking statements are subject to the ongoing and developing circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have a material adverse effect on our business, operations and future financial results. As a result, you are cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These and other risks concerning Akcea's programs are described in additional detail in Akcea's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and annual reports on Form 10-K, which are on file with the SEC. Copies of these and other documents are available from the company.

In this press release, unless the context requires otherwise, "Ionis," "Akcea," "Company," "Companies," "we," "our," and "us" refers to Ionis Pharmaceuticals and/or Akcea Therapeutics.

Ionis Pharmaceuticals^™ is a trademark of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Akcea Therapeutics^®, TEGSEDI^® and WAYLIVRA^® are trademarks of Akcea Therapeutics, Inc.

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SOURCE Akcea Therapeutics, Inc.