NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Becton Dickinson disclosed during its fiscal fourth quarter and full-year earnings call several changes to its executive leadership.
Tom Polen has been promoted to the role of group president for the Medical Surgical Systems and Preanalytical-Pharmaceutical Systems business units. Polen had most recently served as president of Diagnostic Systems and before that, president of Preanalytical Systems.
Linda Tharby has also been promoted to the role of group president for Biosciences and Preanalytical Systems. Tharby had most recently been president of Diabetes Care, and prior to that, served as vice president and general manager in Pharmaceutical Systems after serving as country general manager in Canada.
Meantime, Alberto Mas is assuming Polen's responsibilities in Diagnostic Systems. Mas had most recently served as president of BD Biosciences for the past two years. Prior to that, he served as worldwide president for Medical Surgical Systems in BD Medical for six years.
Finally, BD said during the call that Claude Dartiguelongue will assume all responsibilities previously held by Mas as president of BD Biosciences. Dartiguelongue previously served as president of Pharmaceutical Systems since October 2009.
Monica Riley, the co-founder of the EcoCyc database, has died at the age of 87, according to the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.
Riley also developed classification systems for gene products and their functions, which presaged current gene ontologies and enabled comparative and functional genomics.
She earned a PhD in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied gene expression and collaborated on the work that led to the discovery of mRNA. She did her postdoc work at Stanford University and later joined the faculties of UC-Davis and the State University of New York at Stony Brook before joining MBL.
Genomic Health announced that Phillip Febbo has joined the firm as its new chief medical officer.
Febbo is an experienced physician scientist who was previously a professor of medicine and urology at the University of California, San Francisco. He will report to Steve Shak, Genomic Health's executive VP of R&D.
Additionally, Henry Fuchs, executive VP and CMO of Biomarin, has joined Genomic Health's board of directors. He has previously held leadership roles at Onyx and Genentech.
Woodrow Myers, managing director of Myers Ventures, will step down from his seven-year tenure on Genomic Health's board. Myers will now be CEO of Corizon, a provider of correctional healthcare services.
Biocept this week announced the appointment of Marsha Chandler and Bruce Huebner as independent directors.
Chandler is currently executive vice president and COO of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. She previously served as senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of California, San Diego. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and received her PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Huebner is managing director of LynxCom Partners, and is chairman of the board of Vermillion. Previously he served as president and CEO of TrovaGene, and president of Osmetech Molecular Diagnostics (now GenMark Diagnostics). Huebner also previously served as president and COO of Nanogen, and executive vice president and COO of Gen-Probe (now part of Hologic).
Pathway Genomics has appointed Robert Verfuth to be VP of sales.
Verfuth has 20 years of experience in the medical diagnostics and pharmaceutical fields and formerly was a VP of sales at Dianon Systems, Prometheus Laboratories, and GeneOhm Sciences. In his new post Verfuth will lead Pathway's US sales division.
Ariosa Diagnostics said this week that it has promoted Dan Puckett to the post of chief financial officer and Thomas Musci to chief medical officer.
Puckett has been with Ariosa for over two years as VP of finance and administration. Musci joined Ariosa in 2012 as VP of clinical and medical affairs.
Singulex said this week that it has appointed Jeffrey Bishop vice president of research and development and Linda Greub vice president of business development.
Bishop was previously vice president of research and development at Alere.
Greub was previously global director of strategy, business development at Novartis. Prior to that, she was senior director of strategy and business development at Applied Biosystems, as well as a senior healthcare analyst for several investment banks and hedge funds.
Accelerate Diagnostics has appointed Mark Miller to its board of directors.
Miller currently is executive chairman and director of Stericycle, where he was CEO for two decades and chairman of the board for four years. He also previously was VP for the Pacific, Asia, and Africa regions at Abbott Laboratories.
MolecularHealth has made the first three appointments to its advisory board, including Joyce O'Shaughnessy, Burton Schwartz, and Thomas Wheeler.
O'Shaughnessy, an expert on breast cancer prevention and treatment, serves as co-chair of Breast Cancer Research at US Oncology and as a member of US Oncology's scientific advisory board, and she previously was a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute.
Schwartz is a founding member of Minnesota Oncology and a board member at US Oncology.
Wheeler is chairman of the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Salt Lake City-based Tute Genomics has appointed Dinesh Patel, co-founder of vSpring Capital (now Signal Peak Ventures), to serve on its board of directors.
The company offers a cloud-based clinical genome interpretation engine for use in analyzing personal genome information quickly and cost-effectively.
Patel has led investments in Exagen, Altea Therapeutics, Q Therapeutics, Axial, and other firms.
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