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People In The News: Jan 18, 2013

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute said this week that CEO John Reed is leaving his post at the institute to become head of Roche Pharma Research and Early Development and to serve on the firm's corporate executive committee. Sanford-Burnham's current President, Kristiina Vuori, will take over Reed's responsibilities on an interim basis while the institute seeks his replacement.

After the management transition process is complete, Reed will continue to hold an adjunct professor spot with the institute.

Vuori, in addition to her role as president, also is director of Sanford-Burnham's National Cancer Institute -designated Cancer Center, and she has been a faculty member at the institute since 1996.


Fluidigm said this week that it has appointed Gerhard Burbach to its board, as well as the board's audit and compensation committees.

Burbach currently serves as president, CEO, and director of Thoratec, a publicly traded company that develops, manufactures, and markets medical devices for circulatory support. Prior to this, he served as president and CEO of Digirad and served as a member of its board. He also has worked for Bacchus Vascular, Philips Nuclear Medicine, and ADAC Laboratories, now part of Philips. Burbach also spent six years with the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.


Seegene this week announced the appointment of Jon Hurrell as senior executive vice president.

In this role Hurrell will run Seegene's B2B business unit responsible for global licensing, OEM, and companion diagnostic deals, as well as widening the company's customer base within the clinical laboratory test market.

Hurrell most recently served as president and general manager of Focus Diagnostics, a subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics. Prior to that, he served as vice president of business development at Quest. He also held numerous management positions at healthcare firms, including senior vice president and general manager at TriPath Oncology, a subsidiary of TriPath Imaging (now part of Becton Dickinson).


Biocartis said this week that Inge Basteleurs has joined the company as general counsel. Basteleurs will also be a director and member of the executive committee at the company.

Basteleurs joined Biocartis from UCB, where she was vice president legal and secretary general to the board. Prior to joining UCB, Inge worked at Bayer BioScience, where her role included global legal responsibility for and membership of the management committee of several of the company's business areas, including commercial transactions, M&A, intellectual property licensing, and government affairs.


The National Institutes of Health has appointed Franziska Greider to be director of the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP), which is the part of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives that reports on emerging scientific opportunities, public health issues, and knowledge gaps.

Greider has been ORIP's acting director since July 2012, and before holding that position she was director of the Division of Comparative Medicine at the former National Center for Research Resources for eight years, and a faculty member in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Molecular/Cell Biology and Neuroscience in the School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University.


Christopher McGuigan has been appointed to serve on Trovagene's board of directors.

McGuigan has been head of Medicinal Chemistry at Cardiff University and a professor at the Welsh School of Pharmacy since 1995, and last year he was appointed pro vice chancellor at the school. He also is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceutics and a former president of the International Society for Antiviral Research.


Venture capital firm InterWest Partners announced this week that Doug Fisher has been promoted to partner.

Fisher joined InterWest as a principal in 2009 and since then has been involved in InterWest investments in a variety of biotech firms including proteomic diagnostic companies Sera Prognostics and Integrated Diagnostics.


Bruker said this week it has appointed Joshua Young vice president of investor relations. Young will take over for Stacey Desrochers, who will focus on management of the company's treasury operations.

Previously Young was global head of investor relations at Merck KGaA. Before that he was head of investor relations at Millipore.


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