Stephen DeFalco Named CEO of US Genomics; McBurney and Stroobant Go from Differential Proteomics to Beyond Genomics; and Others

ONEW YORK, March 26 -Stephen DeFalco has been named CEO and Chairman of US Genomics, the Woburn, Mass.company said today.

DeFalco comes to US Genomics from PerkinElmer Instruments, where he was president and senior vice president of PerkinElmer. PerkinElmer Instruments merged with Perkin Elmer Life Sciences in October 2002, and PerkinElmer life sciences president Peter Coggins subsequently assumed leadership of the combined unit.

DeFalco replaces as CEO and Chairman US Genomics founder Eugene Chan, who will remain on the company's board of directors and will work to develop "advanced applications" of the company's GeneEngine single-molecule analysis platform for DNA, RNA, and protein analysis, the company said.

Before joining PerkinElmer, DeFalco has held management positions at United Technologies, McKinsey & Company, and IBM.

Robert McBurney has been appointed CSO and senior vice president of R&D for Beyond Genomics, and Paul Stroobant has been named vice president of biochemistry and protein discovery, the Waltham, Mass.-basedsystems biology company said March 25.

McBurney and Stroobant come to Beyond Genomics from Differential Proteomics, a startup proteomics company they co-founded.

McBurney was previously president of CeNeS Pharmaceuticals and CSO and president of Cambridge NeuroScience; as well as serving as assistant director of the UK Medical Research Council's neuroendocrinology unit, and in numerous academic positions in the US and UK.

Stroobant also established protein biochemistry groups at Cell Genesys and Millennium Pharmaceuticals; and served as head of the growth factor and bioreactor laboratories at London's Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research.

Larry Felser has been named director of systems and software development for Gene Network Sciences, of Ithaca, NY, and four new members have joined its scientific advisory board, the company said March 25.

Felser, who will oversee the company's cell modeling platform, most recently was a software development director at Autodesk.

The new SAB members include: John Tyson, a professor of molecular cell biology at Virginia Tech, John Guckenheimer, a Cornell mathematics professor, Christoph Lengauer, an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and Mike Shuler, a Cornell professor of chemical engineering.

Both Tyson and Shuler bring experience in cell system and biochemical circuit modeling, while Lengauer has studied the genetics and cell biology of colon cancer, and Guckenheimer is an expert in dynamical systems and chaos theory.

Alan Nies has been appointed chairman of Lexicon Genetics' medical advisory board, the company said March 25.

Neis served as senior vice president of clinical sciences at Merck for ten years, and also spent fifteen years as head of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center's division of chemical pharmacology.

Patriz Zenner has been named to the board of directors of genomic-based cancer diagnostic company Exact Sciences, the company said March 25.

Zenner retired from his post as president and CEO of Hoffman-LaRoche North America in 2001, where he had worked since 1969. He currently serves on the board of directors of Curagen, Genta, Praecis Pharmaceuticals, and Xoma.

Keith Dunker has signed on as director of the center for bioinformatics at Ingen, the Indiana Genomics Inititative, and a professor at IU schoolof Medicinein Indianapolis, the university said March 21.

Ingen, which has been funded with a $105 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, comprises programs in bioinformatics, genomics, medical informatics, education, bioethics, and training.

Dunker has been a professor at Washington StateUniversitysince 1975, and uses bioinformatics to study the relationship between protein folding and function.  He also informally consults with his wife, Ya-Yue Van, who is president of Molecular Kinetics, the North American distributor of BioLogic products. Molecular Kinetics will move to Indianapolisand is considering use of incubator space at IU, the University said.