Biotechnology startup Sirtris Pharmaceuticals said last week that Paul Schimmel and Christoph Westphal have joined its board of directors.
Schimmel is a faculty member of the Scripps Institute, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a cofounder of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. He holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Westphal is a general partner at the venture capital firm of Polaris Venture Partners and CEO of Sirtris. He is also a cofounder, and was the startup CEO, of Alnylam. Westphal holds a PhD and MD from Harvard Medical School.
Galapagos Genomics has appointed Raj Parekh as chairman, and Wilson Totten as a director.
Parekh is currently Entrepreneur in Residence at Abingworth, a UK-based venture capital company. He co-founded Oxford GlycoSciences in 1988 and was chief scientific officer and senior vice president of research.
Totten is CEO of ProStrakan, a company formed by the recent merger of Strakan and Proskelia. Until recently, he was R&D director at Shire. Before joining Shire, in 1998, he was vice president of clinical R&D with Astra Charnwood.
CombiMatrix president and CEO Amit Kumar will become a director of start-up drug maker Leuchemix.
CombiMatrix, a unit of Acacia Research, earlier this week said it will pay Leuchemix $4 million over two years to obtain a 33-percent stake in the company.
Hybridon has appointed Naveen Anand as the company’s vice president of corporate and business development.
Anand was previously vice president of business development at Shire Biologics. Before this, he was vice president of business development and licensing at Procyon Biopharma.
Anand holds a PhD in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the University of Toronto, Canada.