McKinley resigns as Benitec CEO

John McKinley is to resign as CEO of Brisbane-base RNAi specialist Benitec (ASX:BLT) and Sydney solicitor Ray Whitten -- a 5.79 per cent shareholder through Barbary Coast Investments -- has been appointed as chairman of its board.

Benitec also announced it has appointed its chief operating officer, Sara Cunningham, as acting CEO, saying its board had full confidence in her ability to meet the challenges of the future.

Cunningham was co-founder and a former vice-president of intellectual property and business development of RNAi therapeutics developer Avocel, which Benitec acquired in May last year.

Benitec's ASX announcement gave no reason for McKinley's resignation, and a company spokesman today declined to comment further on the changes.

McKinley will remain a non-executive director of the company. Benitec thanked him for "his assistance in growing the business of Benitec during its recent period of consolidation".

Benitec is currently involved in a dogfight with Pennsylvanian RNAi-therapeutics developer Nucleonics over royalties from key patents, jointly owned by Benitec and CSIRO.

Benitec filed suit against Nucleonics in the US courts last November for allegedly infringing its patents on RNA-induced gene silencing technology.

Nucleonics responded by requesting IP Australia -- the Australian Patent Office -- to re-examine two CSIRO-Benitec patents. The IP Australia examiner subsequently found that all claims originally made in the two patents lacked novelty, and did not involve an inventive step. Benitec and CSIRO were given two months to defend the patent, before proceedings to revoke the patents begin.

Just before Christmas, Benitec announced that Nucleonics had also successfully sought a similar re-examination from the US Patent Office.

Benitec responded by saying that, with CSIRO, it would continue to resist any attempt to cancel or narrow the proper scope of its issued patent claims.

On January 14, Nucleonics said it had asked the European Patent Office to conduct an "observation" on the patents, that will take account of the Australian and US re-examinations, as part of its current examination of Benitec's patent applications in Europe.