Ontology engineering

people© 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.Inovio Biomedical (San Diego) has namedMark L. Bagarazzi as chief medical officer.Bagarazzi joins Inovio from Merck & Co.,where he was director of worldwide regulatoryaffairs for vaccines and biologics. Before joiningMerck in 2001, he was director of the HIV/AIDS program for St. Christopher’s Hospitalfor Children in Philadelphia.IRX Therapeutics (New York) has namedNeil L. Berinstein CSO, succeeding companyfounder John W. Hadden, who remains amember of the board of directors. Berinsteinpreviously served as assistant vice presidentand global program leader at Sanofi Pasteur,where he was in charge of leading the developmentof the company’s cancer vaccines bothstrategically and operationally.Genzyme (Cambridge, MA, USA) has namedRon Branning as its new senior vice president ofglobal product quality. Branning is tasked withensuring the quality of all Genzyme productsmanufactured at 17 sites around the world. Hebrings 30 years of experience in product qualityand regulatory affairs at biotech and pharmacompanies including Johnson & Johnson, GileadSciences and Genentech as well as companiesacquired by Baxter, Wyeth and Pfizer.Makefield Therapeutics (Newtown, PA, USA) has announcedthe appointment of Jim Ballance (left) as CSO. Most recently acorporate strategic consultant to the biotech industry, Ballancebrings more than 20 years of experience in the development andmanufacturing of novel therapeutics. His experience includes suchpositions as vice president, technology development at BioRexisPharmaceutical, director of biotech evaluation at Aventis Behring,chief technology officer at Genesis Therapeutics and head of R&Dat Delta Biotechnology.team following its recently completed mergerwith Neuromed. Mark Corrigan, former executivevice president of R&D at Sepracor and amember of the CombinatoRx board of directors,will assume the role of president and CEOof CombinatoRx and Christopher Gallen, formerCEO of Neuromed, will serve as executivevice president of R&D. CombinatoRx’s interimpresident and CEO Robert Forrester has decidedto leave his position at the company to pursueother opportunities.Roger Hickling has been appointed R&Ddirector and a board director at Phytopharm(Godmanchester, UK). He previously workedat SmithKline Beecham where he oversawboth in-house and partnered early stage neurosciencedevelopment projects, and was mostrecently R&D director and a board member atAlizyme Therapeutics.Prana Biotechnology (Melbourne, Australia)has named Paul Marks as a director of thecompany. Marks was previously vice presidentof foreign exchange with Prudential-Bache Securities and senior FX strategistwith National Australia Bank. He also servesas director of Conquest Mining and severalprivate companies.annual shareholder meeting. The company hasstarted a search for Mullen’s successor.CrystalGenomics (Seoul, S. Korea) has chosenEric M. Nelson to serve as vice presidentof business development for its USsubsidiary, Emeryville, California-based CGPharmaceuticals. Nelson brings 22 years ofexperience in business development andlicensing for pharma and biotech companies.Most recently, he was global head of businessdevelopment at Advinus Therapeutics.Proteonomix (Mountainside, NJ, USA)has announced the following managementchanges: Joel Pensley has resigned as secretary,director and general counsel and RogerFidler has joined the company as director andgeneral counsel; and Steven Byle, presentlya director, has assumed the role of secretary.Pensley resigned as an officer and director dueto health concerns. Fidler has been the soledirector, president, CEO and CFO of GlobalAgri-Med Technologies.Eric Ruby has joined Presidio Pharmaceuticals(San Francisco) as vice president of regulatoryaffairs. He served previously as seniordirector, regulatory affairs at AlnylamPharmaceuticals, where he was responsiblefor regulatory filings to support clinical trialsin the US and Europe.Protagen (Dortmund, Germany) hasappointed two new members to its executiveboard: Peter Schulz-Knappe, former CSO atProteome Sciences, will head the company’sdiagnostics business unit, and co-founder andCOO Martin Blüggel will manage the proteinservices unit.Ian Brown has been named CEO of BioCeramicTherapeutics (London) as part of a successionplan developed by the board of directors to succeedthe company’s outgoing founding CEO,Daniel Green. Brown has held senior executivepositions with Chromogenix (previouslyKabi Pharmacia), Instrumentation Laboratory,Cordlife, SDP Technology and Avanti Capital.Green will remain as a company director.CombinatoRx (Cambridge, MA, USA) hasannounced changes to its senior managementBIND Biosciences (Cambridge, MA, USA) hasannounced the appointment of Scott Minickas president and CEO. Minick was formerly amanaging director at ARCH Venture Partnersand previously president and COO of SequusPharmaceuticals/Liposome Technology.Biogen Idec (Cambridge, MA, USA) hasannounced that James Mullen will retire aspresident and CEO as of June 8. Mullen willalso retire from Biogen’s board at the end of hiscurrent term as a director at the company’s 2010Pieris (Freising-Weihenstephan,Germany) hasannounced theappointment ofStephen S. Yoder(left) as CEO. Hesucceeds interimCEO and co-founderClaus Schalper, who will remain CFO. Yoderjoins Pieris from MorphoSys, where he servedas general counsel and head of licensing & IP.180 volume 28 number 2 february 2010 nature biotechnology