NervGen Pharma appointed John Ruffolo to Board of Directors . He has Extensive experience in private equity, venture capital and advising high growth, innovative companies, Brings personal experience and knowledge of spinal cord injury to NervGen's board, Important board addition joins as Company advances clinical milestone with Phase 1b/2a study of NVG-291 underway. John Ruffolo is the Founder and Managing Partner of Maverix Private Equity, a private equity firm focused on innovation-enabled growth and disruption investment strategies.

Previously he founded OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of the large Ontario pension fund where he led early investments in startup success stories such as Shopify Inc. He has also championed Canada's technology industry as a co-founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators, along with former Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie. As an active board member in the profit and not-for-profit sectors, John currently works with many leading innovative organizations includingAI Partnerships Corp., engineering.com, OneEleven, the Rick Hansen Foundation, the CIBC Foundation, Caldwell's Top 40 Under 40, the Investigative Journalism Foundation, and the Dean's Global Council for the Schulich School of Business. The Company also announced that it has granted 150,000 incentive stock options to Mr. Ruffolo exercisable at a price of $1.75 per share for a period of five years and that vest equally every three months over a one-year period.