Craig Venter has been named to Ionian Technologies’ board of directors.
Venter, the former president and founder of Celera Genomics, currently heads up three non-profits that he founded: The Center for the Advancement of Genomics; the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives; and the Craig Venter Science Foundation. He is also founder and chairman of The Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md.
Venter received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego in pharmacology and physiology.
Ionian Technologies, which is privately held and located in Upland, Calif., develops molecular diagnostics tools using isothermal DNA and RNA amplification. The company was founded by David Galas and Jeffrey Van Ness, from the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, Calif.
Inpharmatica, a UK-based drug discovery company, said it has recruited seven as-yet unnamed medicinal chemists from Millennium Pharmaceuticals’ Cambridge, UK site, and has appointed Andrew Ayscough as director of chemistry.
Ayscough comes to Inpharmatica, which links together genomic, proteomic, and chemistry data using its PharmaCarta platform, from British Biotech Pharmaceuticals, where he directed medicinal chemistry programs and oversaw research in cancer and anti-infectives, as well as collaborations with the company’s pharmaceutical partners. Ayscough received his D.Phil from the University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Laboratory, and his first degree from the University of Bath.
The seven medicinal chemists are migrating from Millennium to Inpharmatica in the wake of Millennium’s recent announcement that it was closing its Cambridge, UK, site, Inpharmatica said.
Scott Rocklage has been appointed executive chairman of the board at Milkana Therapeutics, which is based in the San Francisco area and Toronto.
Rocklage is chairman of Cubist Pharmaceuticals, of Lexington, Mass., where he served as CEO and a director from 1994 through 2003. Prior to that, Rocklage was president and CEO of Nycomed Salutar, a diagnostic imaging company, and Nycomed Interventional a medical device company; and before that, held R&D positions at Salutar.
Currently, Rocklage sits on the board of MDS Proteomics in Tor- onto and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.
Rocklage received his BS in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and his PhD in chemistry from MIT.
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