MyoKardia (S. San Francisco, CA, USA) has named Tassos Gianakakos (right) CEO, succeeding founding CEO Charles Homcy who will remain on MyoKardia's board of directors. Gianakakos brings over 17 years of biopharmaceutical expertise to the position. He joins the company from MAP Pharmaceuticals where he was most recently senior vice president and chief business officer. Prior to MAP, he served as president and senior vice president, business development, and global head of Codexis' pharmaceuticals business unit.

“Tassos is a proven industry leader with deep scientific, financial, operational and business development experience, which will be invaluable to MyoKardia as the team continues to develop our platform targeting genetic heart disease and to rapidly advance our lead cardiomyopathy program toward the clinic,” says outgoing CEO Homcy.

Boston Biomedical (Cambridge, MA, USA) has appointed Patricia S. Andrews as executive vice president and chief commercial officer. Andrews most recently served in the same capacity at Incyte. She previously spent 17 years at Pfizer in various positions, culminating in her role as vice president and general manager of the US oncology business unit.

Activaero (Gemünden, Germany) has announced the appointment of Ulrich Dauer as chief strategy officer. Previously he was founding and CEO of the discovery and development company 4SC.

Francis deSouza has been appointed president of Illumina (San Diego). He previously served as co-founder and CEO of IMlogic until its acquisition by Symantec in February 2006. He then served as president of products and services at Symantec.

John H. Johnson has been appointed to the board of directors of Histogenics (Waltham, MA, USA). He is currently the chairman, president and CEO of Dendreon.

In conjunction with the acquisition of certain assets of privately held Phyxius Pharma, Oxygen Biotherapeutics (Morrisville, NC, USA) has announced that three key Phyxius executives will join its management team. Phyxius co-founder and CEO John Kelley has been named CEO and a member of the board of Oxygen Biotherapeutics. Michael Jebsen, Oxygen's prior interim CEO and current CFO, will continue serving as CFO. In addition, Phyxius Pharma executives and co-founders Doug Randall and Douglas Hay will serve as executive vice president of business and commercial operations and executive vice president of regulatory affairs, respectively.

Immunocore (Oxford, UK) has announced the appointment of Jonathan Knowles as executive chairman of the board of directors. He succeeds Nicholas Cross, who will remain on the board as deputy chairman. Knowles has been a nonexecutive director of Immunocore since 2010 and was formerly president of group research and a member of the executive committee at F. Hoffman-LaRoche.

Damian Marron, an industry veteran with 26 years of experience, has been appointed CEO of TxCell (Valbonne, France). He previously served as CEO of Cytheris and Trophos. In addition, TxCell has announced that François Meyer, previously CEO and chairman of the board, has been appointed executive chairman of the board of directors.

Affimed Therapeutics (Heidelberg, Germany) has named Jens-Peter Marschner chief medical officer. Previously at Merck KGaA, Marschner led the clinical development team for Erbitux (cetuximab) as vice president of global medical affairs.

Genticel (Toulouse, France) has appointed Gerald Moeller (right) as a vice president to the supervisory board. Moeller has over 35 years experience in the pharma and diagnostics industry. He serves as an investment adviser at HBM Partners, a board member at FIND Foundation and Illumina and a board chairman at 4Sigma, Definiens, Invendo-Medical and MorphoSys.

William I. Ramage has been appointed chief development officer of Acusphere (Lexington, MA, USA). He served as an executive consultant to the company from 2000 to 2013 and was also vice president of business development and customer services at DuPont-Merck.

William Rice has been appointed CEO and chairman of the board of directors of Lorus Therapeutics (Toronto). He was most recently president, CEO and chairman of the board at privately held Cylene Pharmaceuticals, and before that was the founder, president, CEO and a director of Achillion Pharmaceuticals. Lorus also announced the addition of Daniel D. Von Hoff as senior vice president of medical affairs. Von Hoff is the physician-in-chief, distinguished professor at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, and a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

Laurie Smaldone Alsup (right) has been elected to the board of directors of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals (S. San Francisco, CA, USA), replacing Dennis Henner. Smaldone Alsup has over 25 years of experience in the pharma and biotech industries. She currently serves as president and CSO of PharmApprove, a regulatory communications consultancy firm. At Bristol-Myers Squibb, she held positions such as senior vice president of global regulatory science, vice president of infectious diseases clinical research, and director of cancer clinical research. She also previously served as CEO of Phytomedics.

Miroslawa Zydron has been appointed as a member of the management board and director of the chemistry division of Selvita (Krakow, Poland). She joined Selvita in December 2009 and has been responsible for the chemistry services division. In addition, the company has named Krzysztof Brzozka executive vice president, CSO. He joined Selvita in 2007, becoming a project manager of the company's first anticancer project.