TissueInformatics, known for its bioinformatics tools aimed at tissue information analysis, appointed Dennis Meteny president and COO. Meteny, who was formerly president and CEO of Respironics, helped Tissue-Informatics raise $4.4 million in a recent financing round.
Perhaps the “GlaxoSmithKline” mouthful was too much for some potential employees. Among those who cut the ties: Michael Milburn joins Structural GenomiX as vice president of structural biology. Milburn, formerly at Glaxo Wellcome, will direct high-throughput x-ray crystallography on prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. Former senior veep at SmithKline Beecham Gary Patou has gone soft. GeneSoft, that is, where he’s the new president. James Cochrane retired from his position as executive director of Glaxo when the companies merged and became a director at the UK biotech firm Genetix Group. Also new to Genetix is James Hill, former senior VP of corporate affairs at SmithKline. Hill, like Cochrane, retired when the merger took place.
Hyseq announced the resignation of CFO Mark Gitter, who says, “The time has arrived for me to take the next steps in my career.” At the time, there were no candidates yet under consideration for the position.
After 26 years at Mitsui, Toshio Nakata was appointed to the new position of president of Biogen Japan and VP of Biogen Inc. He will supervise development and commercial operations in Japan.
Shortly after Genset confirmed VP Bernard Bihain''s departure, ValiGen announced that it had snapped him up by offering him the CSO position.
GeneFormatics, a San Diego-based firm dealing with protein function and structure, appointed Daniel Chambers as vice president of intellectual property. Chambers was formerly in private law practice. GeneFormatics also retained Michael Liebman, director of computational biology at U Penn’s med school, to advise on product and business development.
Kellie Leigh, a new PhD student at the Centre for Advanced Technologies in Animal Genetics and Reproduction in Australia, faces an unusual problem: she’s studying African wild dogs. In an e-mail posted to the AnGenMap mailing list, Imke Tammen of the center writes to colleagues, “Sample collection is obviously a bit tricky in wild dogs. Has anyone a reliable protocol for DNA extraction from fecal samples?” Now that’s what you call doggedness.