Beyond Air® Strengthens Commercial Leadership Team with Appointments of Head of Sales and Head of Marketing

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., May 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Beyond Air, Inc. (NASDAQ: XAIR), a clinical-stage medical device and biopharmaceutical company focused on developing inhaled nitric oxide (NO) for the treatment of patients with respiratory conditions, including serious lung infections and pulmonary hypertension, and gaseous NO (gNO) for the treatment of solid tumors, today announced the appointments of Rebecca Van Doren as Head of Sales and Kori-Ann Taylor as Head of Marketing. Ms. Van Doren and Ms. Taylor each bring decades of healthcare industry leadership experience and in-depth knowledge of the nitric oxide market, working with Ikaria and then Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals to successfully drive sales and marketing initiatives for the current NO market leader.

“On behalf of Beyond Air, I am delighted to welcome Rebecca and Kori-Ann, who both come to us with extensive nitric oxide experience in the commercial setting and intimate knowledge of the competitive landscape. These two appointments are part of our strategy to build a strong commercial team, which is crucial to the success of LungFit® PH, and an essential part of growing the entire LungFit® franchise,” said Duncan Fatkin, Chief Commercial Officer of Beyond Air. “I firmly believe that our generator-based delivery system can be the transformative technology in the respiratory care space with the potential to change how nitric oxide is used to the benefit of both patients and hospitals. As we prepare for a focused launch of LungFit® PH in the US for PPHN, the Company will rely on a select group of industry veterans to spearhead this effort.”

Rebecca Van Doren brings over 20 years of healthcare leadership and sales experience to Beyond Air, dedicating the majority of her career to envisioning and invigorating winning commercial strategies for nitric oxide, both in the US and Australia with Ikaria and Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. She has crafted and led commercialization programs for medical device and pharmaceutical products in global companies, including, most recently, Fresenius Medical Care. As an accomplished commercial leader, Ms. Van Doren unites business with science into comprehensive, global programs that support highly successful product launches of complex drug/devices within hospitals and health systems. As an industry-recognized sales leader, she recruits, mentors, and develops top talent to develop a world class sales team to maximize opportunity while assuring customer-centricity and focusing on exceptional service. As Head of Sales at Beyond Air, Ms. Van Doren will lead all sales operations for the US.

Kori-Ann Taylor joins Beyond Air as an experienced marketing leader within the healthcare industry. She has a strong track record of success in developing winning strategies, building results-driven teams, and driving integrated marketing campaigns in rapidly changing competitive landscapes across various device and pharmaceutical brands. Ms. Taylor joins Beyond Air from aptihealth, where she served as the Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for brand building, developing, and leading all marketing initiatives and launches across health plans and hospital systems. Before her time at aptihealth, Ms. Taylor spent over a decade as an award-winning account lead at highly respected marketing agencies, including Fingerpaint Marketing and Palio, leading U.S. and global campaign development and launches for healthcare brands. While at Fingerpaint, she was the marketing account lead for the industry nitric oxide leader, under both Ikaria and Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. She successfully led the development and implementation of comprehensive marketing strategies and integrated campaigns supporting year-over-year double-digit sales growth. As Head of Marketing at Beyond Air, Ms. Taylor will drive the development and execution of comprehensive marketing strategies across all products and launches. She also will oversee corporate and product brand building for Beyond Air's extensive pipeline, positioning Beyond Air for tremendous growth. 

About Beyond Air, Inc.
Beyond Air, Inc. is a clinical-stage medical device and biopharmaceutical company developing a revolutionary NO Generator and Delivery System, LungFit®, that uses NO generated from ambient air to deliver precise amounts of NO to the lungs for the potential treatment of a variety of pulmonary diseases. LungFit® can generate up to 400 ppm of NO, for delivery either continuously or for a fixed amount of time and has the ability to either titrate dose on demand or maintain a constant dose. The Company is currently applying its therapeutic expertise to develop treatments for pulmonary hypertension in various settings, in addition to treatments for respiratory tract infections that are not effectively addressed with current standards of care. Beyond Air is currently advancing its revolutionary LungFit® for clinical trials for the treatment of severe lung infections such as SARS-CoV-2 and nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). Additionally, Beyond Air is using ultra-high concentrations of NO with a proprietary delivery system to target certain solid tumors in the pre-clinical setting. For more information, visit www.beyondair.net.

About Nitric Oxide (NO)
Nitric Oxide (NO) is a powerful molecule, naturally synthesized in the human body, proven to play a critical role in a broad array of biological functions. In the airways, NO targets the vascular smooth muscle cells that surround the small resistance arteries in the lungs. Currently, exogenous inhaled NO is used in adult respiratory distress syndrome, post certain cardiac surgeries and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn to treat hypoxemia. Additionally, NO is believed to play a key role in the innate immune system and in vitro studies suggest that NO possesses anti-microbial activity not only against common bacteria, including both gram-positive and gram-negative, but also against other diverse pathogens, including mycobacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast and parasites, and has the potential to eliminate multi-drug resistant strains.

About LungFit®*
Beyond Air’s LungFit® is a cylinder-free, phasic flow nitric oxide generator and delivery system and has been designated as a medical device by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The ventilator compatible version of the device can generate NO from ambient air on demand for delivery to the lungs at concentrations ranging from 1 part per million (ppm) to 80 ppm. LungFit® system could potentially replace large, high-pressure NO cylinders providing significant advantages in the hospital setting, including greatly reducing inventory and storage requirements, improving overall safety with the elimination of NO2 purging steps, and other benefits. LungFit® can also deliver NO at concentrations at or above 80 ppm for potentially treating severe acute lung infections in the hospital setting (e.g. COVID-19, bronchiolitis) and chronic, refractory lung infections in the home setting (e.g. NTM). With the elimination of cylinders, Beyond Air intends to offer NO treatment in the home setting.

* Beyond Air’s LungFit® is not approved for commercial use. Beyond Air’s LungFit® is for investigational use only. Beyond Air is not suggesting NO use over 80 ppm or use at home.

About PPHN
Persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN) is a lethal condition and secondary to failure of normal circulatory transition at birth. It is a syndrome characterized by elevated pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) that causes labile hypoxemia due to decreased pulmonary blood flow and right-to-left shunting of blood. Its incidence has been reported as 1.9 per 1000 live births (0.4–6.8/1000 live births) with mortality rate ranging between 4–33%. This syndrome complicates the course of about 10% of infants with respiratory failure and remains a source of considerable morbidity and mortality. NO gas is a vasodilator, is approved in dozens of countries to improve oxygenation and reduces the need for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in term and near-term (>34 weeks gestation) neonates with hypoxic respiratory failure associated with clinical or echocardiographic evidence of pulmonary hypertension in conjunction with ventilator support and other appropriate agents.

Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” concerning inhaled nitric-oxide and the Company’s LungFit® product, including statements with regard to potential regulatory developments, the potential impact on patients and anticipated benefits associated with its use. Forward-looking statements include statements about our expectations, beliefs, or intentions regarding our product offerings, business, financial condition, results of operations, strategies or prospects. You can identify such forward-looking statements by the words “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “impacts,” “plans,” “projects,” “believes,” “estimates,” “likely,” “goal,” “assumes,” “targets” and similar expressions and/or the use of future tense or conditional constructions (such as “will,” “may,” “could,” “should” and the like) and by the fact that these statements do not relate strictly to historical or current matters. Rather, forward-looking statements relate to anticipated or expected events, activities, trends or results as of the date they are made. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and reflect our views as of the date they are made with respect to future events and financial performance. Many factors could cause our actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in forward-looking statements, including risks related to: our approach to discover and develop novel drugs, which is unproven and may never lead to efficacious or marketable products; our ability to fund and the results of further pre-clinical and clinical trials; obtaining, maintaining and protecting intellectual property utilized by our products; our ability to enforce our patents against infringers and to defend our patent portfolio against challenges from third parties; our ability to obtain additional funding to support our business activities; our dependence on third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales, and distribution of products; the successful development of our product candidates, all of which are in early stages of development; obtaining regulatory approval for products; competition from others using technology similar to ours and others developing products for similar uses; our dependence on collaborators; our short operating history and other risks identified and described in more detail in the “Risk Factors” section of the Company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC, all of which are available on our website. We undertake no obligation to update, and we do not have a policy of updating or revising, these forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable law.

CONTACTS:
Steven Lisi, Chief Executive Officer
Beyond Air, Inc.
Slisi@beyondair.net

Maria Yonkoski, Head of Investor Relations
Beyond Air, Inc.
Myonkoski@beyondair.net

Corey Davis, Ph.D.
LifeSci Advisors, LLC
Cdavis@lifesciadvisors.com
(212) 915-2577