Benitec said this week that Sally Brashears, the company’s vice president of intellectual property, has also been named company secretary.
According to Benitec, Brashears joined the company in 2004. Prior to that, she was with the patent law firm Moser, Patterson, and Sheridan, where she focused on biotechnological and semiconductor arts, licensing, due diligence assessments, freedom-to-operate, patentability, and infringement opinions.
At Moser, Patterson, and Sheridan, Brashears served as outside counsel to the National Stem Cell Centre in Australia. Before this, she served as director of intellectual property at Perlegen Sciences, was senior division counsel at Applied Materials, and was director of intellectual property at Clontech Laboratories.
Benitec’s chairman, Raymond Whitten, has been named alternate secretary.
Benitec also announced this week that its director of research and development, Ken Reed, will retire from the company on March 15. He will remain as a non-executive director.
Reed has been with Benitec since 2000.
Atugen said last week that Steven St. Peter, a partner at company investor MPM Capital, has joined the company’s supervisory board.
St. Peter received an MD from Washington University and completed his residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said Atugen. He is also currently an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Columbia University.
Prior to becoming a medical doctor, St. Peter worked as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. He joined MPM in 2004 after stints at Apex Partners and The Carlyle Group.
Donald Halbert has joined Iconix Pharmaceuticals as executive vice president of research and development, the company said this week.
He comes to Iconix from Abbott Laboratories, where he was director of genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics in the global pharmaceutical research and development group. In addition, he was chairman of the Abbott-Iconix scientific advisory committee, overseeing the two companies’ 2003 alliance. Previously, he held scientific and management positions at Becton Dickinson.
Halbert has a PhD in molecular virology from Washington University in St. Louis.