press release archive

Rigel Announces Executive Appointments and Promotions

South San Francisco, CA - October 29, 2001

James M. Gower has been elected to the newly-created position of Chairman of the Board and will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer. He has been with Rigel for nearly five years, serving as President and CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to joining Rigel, Mr. Gower was President and Chief Executive Officer of Tularik, Inc., a biotechnology company developing small-molecule drugs regulating gene expression. Previously, Mr. Gower spent 10 years at Genentech, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, last holding the position of Senior Vice President.

Brian C. Cunningham, who has served as Rigel's Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer for the last three years, has been promoted to President. Mr. Cunningham will continue to serve as Chief Operating Officer, but will relinquish his other roles to focus on directing the operational business of the company. Before joining Rigel, Mr. Cunningham was a partner in the law firm, Cooley Godward LLP, where he was head of the Life Sciences Group and the Health Care Group. Previously, he served as Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel of Genentech Inc.

James H. Welch has been promoted to Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary. He joined Rigel in 1999 and has served as Vice President, Finance and Administration and Assistant Secretary. Previously, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Biocircuits Corporation, a manufacturer of medical diagnostic equipment, and was Division Controller for NeXT Computer, Inc.

"Under the leadership of this management team, Rigel has established impressive research and development collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies, has successfully completed an initial public offering, and has brought two product candidates from the discovery bench through preclinical studies in just five years." said Mr. Gower. "I am confident that this team has the experience, dedication and drive to take Rigel through this next transition into a full-fledged drug development company."

Rigel Pharmaceuticals (www.rigel.com) is a drug discovery and development company that uses advanced functional genomics tools to discover novel drug targets. Rigel's technology is designed to identify molecules which play an important role in regulating a human cell's response to disease by testing a very large number of proteins in a very large number of cells to determine which proteins will change the cell's response to the disease. Rigel currently has programs in asthma/allergy, autoimmunity, transplant rejection, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic bronchitis, cancerous tumor growth and hepatitis C. Rigel has multi-year collaborations with Pfizer Inc., Cell Genesys, Inc., Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V. and Novartis Pharma A.G. Rigel is based in South San Francisco, California.

Statements included in this press release that are not historical in nature are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include those regarding Rigel’s long-term corporate strategy and positioning. Rigel cautions readers that forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements due to the risks and factors identified in Rigel's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000 and other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. The information in this press release is current as of its release date. Rigel does not intend to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.