Akcea Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKCA), a majority-owned affiliate of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., today announced that Carla Poulson has joined the company as senior vice president and chief human resources officer. In these roles, Ms. Poulson will be a part of the executive leadership team and provide proactive, strategic leadership and consultation across all company functions. She will also develop and drive initiatives to continue to build company culture and to support the company's business strategy.

"Carla joins our team during an exciting time of tremendous growth at Akcea as we continue to strengthen our leadership team, advance our global commercialization strategies and make significant progress in expanding our pipeline," said Damien McDevitt, Ph.D., chief executive officer at Akcea. "This newly created position will bring significant value as we continue to focus on developing our teams. Carla's diverse range of experiences will be invaluable in providing strategic counsel and will allow us to build on our achievements as we plan for many important successful developments."

Ms. Poulson has 20 years of experience in human resources in the U.S. and Europe and has held a variety of roles, including providing innovative business solutions and strategic counsel, building and managing company talent, and delivering customized programs and services to support overall business strategy. Before joining Akcea, Ms. Poulson was with Vertex Pharmaceuticals where she most recently served as vice president, senior human resources business partner. While at Vertex she helped build the company's international headquarters from the ground up and led talent strategies in Europe during a period of significant global growth. She also supported the leadership team during the approval, launch and reimbursement process for two innovative medicines in Europe, Brazil and Australia. Prior to Vertex, Ms. Poulson worked at Ahold Corporation, Pepsi Bottling Group and ExxonMobil Corporation in human resources. Ms. Poulson received her bachelor's degree in industrial and organizational psychology and her master's degree in human resources and industrial relations from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Akcea has accomplished so much in the last few years including launching two new commercial products for patients in a short period of time. I am honored to join a company that is positioned to continue to make a meaningful difference in the lives of many patients around the world and look forward to working with the executive leadership team in these efforts in the years ahead," said Ms. Poulson.

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)-LRx, vupanorsen (AKCEA-ANGPTL3-LRx), AKCEA-APOCIII-LRx, and AKCEA-TTR-LRx, 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. WAYLIVRA is approved in the E.U. and is currently in Phase 3 clinical development for the treatment of people with familial partial lipodystrophy, or FPL. 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.