BIOINFORMATICS

Georg Casari

In a switch from one Heidelberg company to another, bioinformatics pioneer Georg Casari has taken up the post of vice-president for informatics at biotech firm Cellzome. He joins the company from LION bioscience, which he co-founded in 1997. Both firms are spin-offs from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).

One of the reasons Casari made the move, he says, is because he enjoys trying to solve new kinds of bioinformatics challenges. LION now has its technology platform pretty much in place and is focusing more on drug discovery, he explains, whereas Cellzome is at an earlier stage of development. “The scientific challenge is much more at the core of the existence of the company,” he says. Casari is pleased that he will still stay near to EMBL in Heidelberg. He did his early scientific work there — including the development of high-throughput bioinformatics-system software, which enabled the then newly sequenced yeast genome to be annotated, as well as providing one of the seeds for LION's birth. Casari views companies as self-funding ways to advance science — in other words, they are alternatives to writing grants. “If you can make value for the customer, the money comes back for the development,” he says.

DRUG DISCOVERY

Peter Fellner

Peter Fellner, already chief executive of one biotech company and a board member of another, last month added another position to his management portfolio.

The Celltech chief executive is now non-executive chair of Astex Technology, a structure-based drug-discovery firm in Cambridge, UK. Fellner is also on the board of Oxford-based start-up Synaptica.

He acknowledges that his responsibilities — daily operation of Celltech plus giving regular strategic advice to Astex and attending board meetings of all three companies — will keep him busy. “One has to be quite organized for it to be done properly,” he says. Fellner has years of biotech management experience, having been chief executive of Celltech for 10 years — “an unusually long time” by biotech industry standards, he says.

BIOTECHNOLOGY

Stephen Runnels

In a career that has already taken him from the United States to Israel, Stephen Runnels is now heading for Singapore. He left his last job as chief executive of ProChon Biotech in Rehovot, Israel, in February, and will assume the same post at S*BIO later this summer. Partly sponsored by the Singaporean government, S*BIO is also partnered with Chiron and focuses on cancer research.

Runnels is enthusiastic about the government's support for the company. “It is a very vibrant environment for the biomedical industry, with a great deal of interest in the success of the company coming from the economic development board, ”he says.

Apart from the usual drug-discovery and business-development challenges, Runnels is excited about establishing a mentorship programme that would place university students in the company's labs “so they can see there are careers in science outside academia”.

FRENCH RESEARCH

The CNRS, France's main research agency, last month appointed Bernard Pau as director of its Department of Life Sciences, one of the agency's eight research divisions. Pau is currently professor of immunology and biotechnology at the University of Montpellier I and director of its Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmacology.

His career has taken him from industry to academia. Pau started out in the private sector, working first for the Coulter Group and then Sanofi, before taking up his university post in 1983. His work at the Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmacology served as a bridge between the two sectors.

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH

Michael Dexter has announced his retirement as director of the Wellcome Trust, Britain's leading biomedical charity. He leaves his post next March, when his five-year term expires. Under Dexter's leadership, the $15-billion foundation helped the Sanger Institute near Cambridge, UK, to grow into an international leader in genomics. At the same time, the trust was helping to shape British science policy, often by investing money for salary and infrastructure that the government was initially reluctant to spend. Dexter has not yet announced what his next project will be, and the trust has yet to select his successor.

BIOIMAGING

Roderic Pettgrew

One year old, and the National Institutes of Health's youngest institute now has its first permanent director. Roderic Pettigrew of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, has been appointed to head the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, a post he will take up later this summer.

Pettigrew has spent much of his career developing cardiovascular imaging techniques, including dynamic three-dimensional imaging of the heart using magnetic resonance (MRI).

Transitions

Three former Hewlett-Packard (HP) executives have joined the SETI Institute board of trustees: Lewis Platt, former HP chairman and chief executive; Joel Birnbaum, former HP senior-vice president of research and director of HP Labs; and Alan Bagley, another former HP executive. Linda Bernardi, founder and chief executive of ConnecTerra, has also joined the institute's board.

Protarga, a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company based in Pennsylvania, has appointed Frank Bambarola as vice-president, oncology, and Timothy McKinlay as senior director of clinical operations. Bambarola joins the company from Bristol-Myers Squibb, and McKinlay will be making his move from AstraZeneca.

Paul Lim, formerly clinical and regulatory director of AstraZeneca Singapore, was last month appointed to the Singapore office of Oxford Natural Products, where he will aid drug development. Oxford Natural Products is a biotech company that specializes in developing drugs from plant products.

This month, Sylvain Goyon will move from his current position as head of the European biotechnology team at CAI Chevreux to become director of corporate relations of NicOx, a pharmaceutical company based in Sophia Antipolis, France.

Robert Williamson, who was chief executive officer of the now-defunct genomics company DoubleTwist, has been hired as president and chief operating officer at Eos Biotechnology, a South San Francisco biotechnology company.