Pairings
Transgenomic this week named Craig Tuttle president and CEO, effective immediately.
Tuttle replaces Collin D'Silva, who resigned in April. Michael Summers, the company's chief financial officer, served as interim CEO. He will remain CFO, Transgenomic said. D'Silva now chairs Transgenomic's board.
Tuttle formerly served as president and chief operating officer of Duke Scientific, a specialty chemistry manufacturer. Prior to that he was the president of Applied Biotech, a home pregnancy test manufacturer. Tuttle has also held management positions with Boehringer Mannheim, Bayer Healthcare, and Cetus. He holds a BS in biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, an MS in biochemistry from the University of Colorado, and an MBA from St. Mary's College.
Clinical Data said last week that it has appointed Robert Bondaryk as general manager and head of its Cogenics unit. He will report to Drew Fromkin, the company's CEO.
Bondaryk will serve as a member of the senior management team on Cogenics strategy, client development, refinement and enhancement, and will focus on guiding the unit toward profitability, the company said.
Bondaryk served most recently as executive vice president and general manager of business development at Proteome Systems. Prior to that, he served as vice president of life science and drug discovery at Fischer Scientific. Bondaryk earned a PhD in biochemistry from Harvard University, as well as an AB in biology from Bowdoin College.
Clinical Data also appointed Abdul Ally as the Cogenics unit's vice president of laboratory operations. Ally will manage day-to-day laboratory operations, and will report to Bondaryk, the company said. Ally previously served as director of operations and development at Sigma Proligo and Sigma Genosys. Prior to that position, he served as director of engineering at Marligen Biosciences, and before that as director of R&D in engineering and senior staff scientist of the genome analysis group at Life Technologies. Ally earned an MS in molecular biology from Howard University.
Agilent Technologies last week named Nick Roelofs as vice president and general manager of its life sciences solutions division. Previously, Roelofs was group operations officer for the life science group at Bio-Rad Laboratories. He also served as chief operating officer of Stratagene. He has held senior positions at Applied Biosystems and Baxter Diagnostic.
Orchid Cellmark senior vice president and chief financial officer Raymond Land has resigned. Land left Orchid after one year in the position. The company is searching for a replacement, a spokesperson told Pharmacogenomics Reporter sister publication GenomeWeb News. Instead of appointing an interim financial officer, Land's responsibilities have been temporarily distributed amongst other executives in the company.
Orchid Cellmark promised executive changes after reporting disappointing financial results for the first quarter.
Norwegian life sciences company DiaGenic said last week it had appointed to its scientific advisory board three international Alzheimer's disease experts: Bengt Winblad, Khalid Iqbal, and Dag Aarsland.
Winblad is head of the Karolinska Institute's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Stockholm, a member of the Nobel Assembly for the Prize of Medicine and Physiology, and chairman of the medical scientific advisory panel of the Alzheimer's Disease International.
Iqbal is professor and chairman of the department of neurochemistry at the New York State Institute for Basic Research. With Winblad, he co-founded the biennial International Conferences on Alzheimer's Disease & Related Disorders.
Aarsland is professor of geriatric psychiatry at the University of Bergen and the head of the Neuropsychiatric Institute in Stavanger, both in Norway.
New Releases
Beckman Coulter released the Agencourt FormaPure system for DNA and RNA extraction from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue samples this week. The product can be automated on the company's Biomek NX Span-8 laboratory automation workstation, which can process 96 samples in about four hours, and including the paraffin digestion step, with "significantly higher" yields than other methods, Beckman Coulter said. The FormaPure system uses paramagnetic bead-based nucleic acid purification, and does not require organic solvents, vacuum filtration or centrifugation steps.
BioMedical Diagnostics this week launched three new kits of its Fidis line: two for Epstein Barr virus, which causes infectious mononucleosis; and a third for predisposition to cardiovascular disease. The EBV G and EBV M kits are designed to detect the presence of G and M antibodies against the Epstein Barr virus, while the APO E test detects apoliprotein E4, which is an indicator of heart failure risk when it is associated with a high level of LDL cholesterol.
Cepheid last week released its CE Marked Smart GBS in vitro device in Europe for rapid detection of group B streptococcus in antepartum and intrapartum women. The system runs on Cepheid's SmartCycler platform, and is the seventh test planned for 2006 release, the company said in a statement. SmartCycler's automated amplification and detection can produce "highly accurate and consistent test results from prepared biological samples in approximately 30-60 minutes," the company said.