Compugen (Tel Aviv, Israel) has announced the appointment of Alex Kotzer as president and CEO, effective September 1, 2005. Mr. Kotzer was previously president and CEO of Israel-based InterPharm before being promoted to the position of vice president at its parent company, Serono, where he was responsible for worldwide manufacturing of the active ingredients for all recombinant biological drugs. Company chairman Martin Gerstel says Kotzer's background “makes him ideal to lead Compugen, as we continue to expand and deepen our predictive research capabilities, and to advance the development and commercialization of our discovery engines as well as our diagnostic and therapeutic product candidates.” Mr. Kotzer will succeed current CEO Mor Amitai, who last year announced his plans to resign by the end of 2005.

Anthony Baxter has been appointed CEO of deltaDOT (London). Mr. Baxter has over 21 years experience within the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Most recently he was CEO of Argenta Discovery.

Lawrence C. Best has been appointed to the board of directors of Archemix (Cambridge, MA, USA). Mr. Best currently serves as executive vice president and CFO of Boston Scientific Corp. He is also a director and audit committee financial expert for Biogen Idec and Haemonetics. In addition, Archemix has also announced the appointment of Michael Kallelis as vice president of manufacturing. Mr. Kallelis previously served as executive vice president and general manager of Avecia Biotechnology.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical (Novato, CA, USA) has appointed Jean-Jacques Bienaime CEO and a member of the board of directors. Mr. Bienaime joins the company from Genencor International, where he had served since 2002 as chairman, CEO and president. Before joining Genencor, Mr. Bienaime served as chairman, CEO and president of Sangstat Medical Corporation.

Genetics Squared (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) has announced the addition of Randal Charlton to its board of directors. Mr. Charlton is the CEO of Asterand, a Detroit-based human tissue bank that provides research material to drug discovery companies.

John W. Chase has been appointed to the position of director of research and development at USB Corporation (Cleveland, OH, USA). Dr. Chase previously served as US R&D director at Amersham Pharmacia Biotech and United States Biochemical. He has been a scientific advisor to USB for the past five years.

Axaron Bioscience (Heidelberg, Germany) has appointed Alfred Hackenberger, president of specialty chemicals research at BASF, to its supervisory board. He succeeds Hans-Jürgen Quadbeck-Seeger, a member of the executive board of BASF.

Illumina (San Diego, CA, USA) has named Christian Henry to the position of vice president and CFO. Mr. Henry was previously vice president, finance and corporate controller at Affymetrix. Most recently, he served as CFO for Tickets.com, a publicly traded company recently acquired by Major League Baseball Advanced Media.

Protiveris (Rockville, MD, USA) has named Gregory Kellogg as chief technology officer. Dr. Kellogg was formerly vice president of research at Network Biosytems and director of R&D at IQUUM.

Alan Kimura has been named vice president, clinical development and medical affairs at Altus Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA, USA). Dr. Kimura was previously executive director, clinical affairs at Transkaryotic Therapies.

Patrick Larcier has been promoted from director, clinical development and regulatory affairs to vice president, drug development at Neovacs (Paris). Before joining the company in 2003, Dr. Larcier served as associate director, international regulatory affairs for Biogen Europe.

Iain Mattaj has been named as director-general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL; Heidelberg, Germany), succeeding Fotis C. Kafatos. Dr. Mattaj came to EMBL-Heidelberg in 1985, leading a successful unit since 1990 and becoming scientific director for the whole of EMBL in 1999. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and served as executive editor of The EMBO Journal from 1990 to 2004.

Protedyne (Windsor, CT, USA) has named Lorah Perlee as director of scientific applications. Prior to joining the company, Dr. Perlee was vice president of operations for two companies, Molecular Staging and DiagXotics.

Neuromed Technologies (Vancouver, BC, Canada) has announced the appointments of Barry Sachais as vice president, clinical development, Sean Cunliffe as vice president, commercial development and Simon Li as vice president, medical research, all newly created positions. Dr. Sachais was most recently director, clinical services at Pharmastar, a medical education and training company; Mr. Cunliffe was vice president, new product marketing at Wyeth; and Dr. Li was associate clinical director, CNS clinical research at Roche Pharmaceuticals.

Stefan Weber has been appointed CFO and Ravi Anand as chief medical officer at Newron Pharmaceuticals (Milan, Italy). Mr. Weber was most recently CFO of Biofrontera, and Dr. Anand is an independent consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. His previous positions include international head of CNS medical affairs at Novartis and global head of CNS clinical research at Organon.