Kathy Hibbs, former senior VP and general counsel at Genomic Health, has joined 23andMe as chief legal and regulatory officer. Hibbs joins 23andMe while the firm is in the midst of regulatory discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration regarding its Personal Genome Service.
Last November, 23andMe received a warning letter in which the agency asked the personal genomics company to stop marketing health-related information to customers without its clearance. While the regulatory issues are being ironed out, 23andMe continues to provide new customers their raw, uninterpreted genomic data and ancestry-related reports (see related story, in this issue).
Hibbs has also worked at Monogram Biosciences and Varian Medical Systems, and is actively engaged in a number of industry groups, such as the American Clinical Laboratory Association, the Coalition for 21st Century Medicine, and the Personalized Medicine Coalition.
Healthcare product commercialization firm PDI announced that Greg Richards is its general manager for its Interpace Diagnostics subsidiary. Richards will be in charge of PDI's molecular diagnostics growth strategy. He comes to PDI with 20 years of experience working in sales and marketing at various life sciences firms. Most recently, Richards worked at Strata Pathology Services, where he restructured and expanded the geographic presence of the pathology sales team.