NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has appointed James Downing as its new CEO, effective July 15. Downing most recently served as deputy director, executive vice president, and scientific director of the hospital. He will succeed William Evans, who is retiring as CEO after 10 years and returning full time to his pharmacogenomics research program at St. Jude.
EpiCypher, an epigenomics products and services firm, has named Sam Tetlow to be its first CEO and to serve on the board of directors.
Tetlow recently was chief business officer with ILS, where he launched ILS Genomics and led organic growth in the commercial sectors. He also served as general manager of ILS Genomics through its first full year of operations. Prior to that, he was a lead director with Immunologix, a University of South Carolina spinout, and before that he was a partner with Research Triangle Ventures.
Omicia has appointed Heidi Rehm, Geoffrey Ginsberg, Thomas Quertermous, and Mark Yandell to its scientific advisory board.
Rehm is director of the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine at Partners Healthcare Personalized Medicine and associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School.
Ginsberg is director of genomic medicine at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, executive director of Duke's Center for Personalized Medicine and Precision, and a professor of medicine and biomedical engineering.
Quertermous is the William G. Irwin professor of medicine and director of research for the division of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University.
Yandell is co-director of the University of Utah's USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery and a professor of human genetics, and a co-inventor of Omicia's VAAST and Phevor algorithms.
Genome editing startup company Editas Medicine said this week it has appointed Katrine Bosley as its CEO.
Bosley previously was CEO of Avila Therapeutics and VP of business development at Adnexus Therapeutics, before it was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2007. She also has held positions in business development, commercial operations, and portfolio strategy at Biogen Idec, worked on the healthcare team at Highland Capital Partners, and recently spent time as an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Broad Institute. She also is chairman of the board at Genocea Biosciences.
The Pew Charitable Trusts has named 22 new Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences, including several investigators working on genomics, genetics, and molecular biology research projects. The Pew scholarship award provides each investigator $240,000 over four years, or $60,000 per year, to help seed their projects as they launch their independent research careers.
The 2014 awardees include: Elcin Unal, an assistant professor of genetics, genomics, and development at the University of California, Berkeley; Erik Andersen, an assistant professor of genetics and genomics at Northwestern University; Yunsun Nam, an assistant professor studying biochemistry, biophysics, and RNA biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Prashanth Rangan, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the State University of New York at Albany; Michael Rust, an assistant professor of genetics and cell biology at the University of Chicago; and Chris Hittinger, an assistant professor who is studying evolutionary genomics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Biomatrica said this week that Nicolas Barthelemy has been added to the company's board of directors while Jeff Whitmore has joined the company as vice president of commercial development.
Barthelemy most recently served at Life Technologies, including as chief commercial officer (president, global commercial operations), president of the cell systems division, senior VP of the cell culture systems division, and senior VP of global operations. Prior to his time at Life Technologies, he held several senior management positions at Biogen Idec. He holds an MS in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and an engineering degree from École Supérieure de Physiques et Chimie Industrielles in Paris.
Whitmore joins Biomatrica from Singulex, where he was vice president of life science sales. He also served as vice president of imaging sales at ProteinSimple; executive vice president of global sales at Alpha Innotech; and director of European life science sales at Molecular Devices.
Vermillion said this week it has appointed Judith Wolf as chief medical officer.
Wolf currently serves as division chief of surgical oncology and vice chair of the department of oncology services at the Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center in Arizona.
Affymetrix has announced the three recipients of its 2014 Tumor Profiling Grant. The grants support translational cancer research. Recipients receive tools to discover and validate at least two different analytes – DNA, RNA, or protein – from 30 tumor samples.
The new recipients and their project titles are: Francesco Caiazza from University College Dublin, for "Discovery and validation of biomarkers of resistance to Cetuximab in metastatic colorectal cancer"; Aditi Hazra from Brigham and Women's Hospital for "Discovery and validation of genomic and transcriptomic biomarkers associated with rapid onset of inflammatory breast cancer"; and Neetu Singh of King George's Medical University, India, for "Genomics and transcriptomics of chronic myeloid leukemia in North Indians."
Retrogenix has tapped Matthew Britz to be its North American business development director. Britz will operate out of the UK firm's newly established US office in Cambridge, Mass. He previously served as director of business development at Evory Therapeutics and earlier in his career held scientific and managerial positions at Pfizer, Merck, and Acambis
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