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People In The News: Jun 21, 2013

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Mike Stratton, director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, has been knighted in the UK.

Stratton founded the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute, leading the team that discovered mutations in the BRAF gene in malignant melanoma. In 2009, his team published the first full genome sequencing of two tumors, a lung cancer and a malignant melanoma. Early in his career, he discovered the BRCA2 breast cancer susceptibility gene.


The Austrian metabolomics and in vitro diagnostics developer Biocrates Life Sciences said this week that it has named Wulf Fischer-Knuppertz to be CEO. Fischer-Knuppertz recently was general manager at Fisher Scientific, and before that he held leadership roles at Roche Diagnostics.

The technical and scientific responsibilities within Biocrates management team will continue to be handled by Chief Technology Officer Ralph Zahn.

The company also said that former chairman of the board Elgar Schnegg will be leaving the company on June 30.


Harold Davies has been appointed CFO of the J. Craig Venter Institute, where he will report to CEO Craig Venter. Antony Peake has been hired as director of sponsored projects, effective July 1, and will report to Davies.

For the past eight years, Davies was CFO at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Previously, he was corporate controller for Alper Ink and also worked as the director of financial planning and analysis for Huttig Building Products.

He is a Certified Public Accountant with an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Peake joins JCVI from Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, where he was director of grants accounting. Previously, he held positions at the University of Cambridge. He is a certified research administrator with a degree in business administration from Cambridge.


PathoGenetics has appointed John Luckey to be VP of engineering. In the role, he will lead development and integration for the firm's Resolution Microbial Genotyping System.

Luckey previously was technical projects director with Roche NimbleGen, and he managed software development and instrumentation engineering activities at OpGen Technologies. He also founded GeneSys Technologies to market the BaseStation DNA Fragment Analyzer, which he designed and developed.


Maverix Biomics has appointed Paul Pickering to be company COO. Pickering formerly held a range of executive roles at Life Technologies, including head of the digital PCR business unit. In his new position, Pickering will lead all business functions, including customer awareness and post-sales support for the Maverix cloud-based analytical systems for next-generation sequencing or high-throughput sequencing data.


The Wellcome Trust has named Alison Cave to be head of Cellular, Developmental, and Physiological Sciences in its Science Funding Division.

Cave previously was a researcher at King's College London, the Boston University School of Medicine, and Guy's Hospital, London, as well as a senior lecturer at King's College.


Sequenom's executive VP of Strategic Planning Ronald Lindsay is cutting back to part-time hours, the company said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week. Lindsay will reduce his time commitment by half and will receive a pro-rated portion of his $358,000 salary. Lindsay also currently serves on the company's board of directors.


Spanish medical diagnostics firm Stat-Diagnostica has appointed Gerard Vaillant as chairman of its board of directors.

Vaillant has held of number of senior executive positions within Johnson & Johnson, including managing director of Ortho Clinical Diagnostics France; vice president of J&J International; worldwide president of LifeScan, a J&J company; and group chairman, diagnostics worldwide. He was also a member of J&J’s Medical Devices and Diagnostic Group Operating Committee until retiring in 2004. After his retirement from J&J, he remained as a board member of both Luminex and Vivacta.

In addition to his current position with Stat-Diagnostica, Vaillant currently serves as chairman of the board of SafeOrthopaedics and PathoQuest; a board member of Tecan; and a venture partner at KLS Partners


Luminex President and CEO Patrick Balthrop has been elected to the Personalized Medicine Coalition's board of directors for a three-year term.

The PMC represents industry, academic, and patient advocacy interests and seeks to advance personalized medicine and to educate policy-makers and the public.

Balthrop has headed Luminex since 2004, and he previously was president of Fisher HealthCare.


Nanosphere has added two new members, Erik Holmlin and Gene Cartwright, to its board of directors, increasing the number of directors from five to seven.

Holmlin is president and CEO of BioNano Genomics, and he formerly held the same posts at GenVault. He also was chief commercial officer at Exiqon, led the formation of GeneOhm Sciences, and was VP of marketing and development for Becton Dickinson Diagnostics after it acquired GeneOhm.

Cartwright was CEO of Omynx, a joint venture between GE and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, for four years, and before that he was president of Molecular Diagnostics for GE Healthcare, and division VP and GM of Molecular Diagnostics for Abbott Diagnostics.


MDx Health said this week that Rudi Pauwels, chairman and CEO at Biocartis, has been elected to serve on its board of directors.

Pauwels is an entrepreneur who has co-founded several biotech firms, including Biocartis and MDxHealth, and Galapagos Genomics.

The company also said that the appointment terms of Karin Dorrepaal and Raphaël Wisniewski have ended.


Genome Quebec has added three new members to its board of directors, including Christiane Ayotte, Egidio Nascimento, and Jacques Simoneau, while two members, Monique Letourneau and Raymond Langlois, have left the board.

Nascimento is CFO at Variation Biotechnologies, and he has previously served as VP of finance for Genome Canada.

Ayotte is a professor and director of the Doping Control Laboratory at Quebec's INRS institute.

Simoneau is president and CEO at Gestion Univalor, and he previously held management positions in venture capital and investing at the Solidarity
Fund and the Business Development Bank of Canada.


The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research has appointed Robert Klein to serve on its board of directors.

Klein was chairman of the governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine for seven years before being elected chairman emeritus for the organization in 2011. He also initiated the Proposition 71 ballot initiative in California that established the CIRM.

He has been a member of Genome Canada's board of directors since 2007, and he previously was co-chair of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Working Group of the Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership, the group that initiated the Cancer Stem Cell Consortium.


BG Medicine's shareholders have re-elected Timothy Harris and Brian Posner to serve on its board of directors until the 2016 annual stockholder meeting, according to an SEC filing.


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