KaloBios Pharmaceuticals (S. San Francisco, CA, USA) has named Jonathan Leff (below, right) chief medical officer and Gary A. Lyons as a member of the company's board of directors. Leff brings to KaloBios over 16 years' experience in biologics development, most recently as vice president and chief medical officer of Halozyme Therapeutics. Lyons has over 30 years of senior management experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. He is the former president and CEO of publicly held Neurocrine Biosciences.

David W. Pritchard, KaloBios president and CEO, comments: “Their extensive track record in the development and commercialization of biologics will serve KaloBios well as we enter the next phase of our company's evolution as a developer of patient-targeted, monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics.”

Chang Ahn has announced that he will transition from his role as CEO of Rexahn Pharmaceuticals (Rockville, MD, USA) to CSO. He will continue to serve as chairman of Rexahn's board of directors, and will serve as both CEO and CSO until the new CEO is named. Rexahn has initiated a search for a CEO to succeed Ahn.

Genesis Biopharma (Los Angeles) has appointed William H. Andrews to its board of directors. Andrews has three decades of experience in biotech R&D and currently serves as president and CEO of Sierra Sciences.

Gentium (Villa Guardia, Italy) has announced that Adrian Haigh has been appointed to the new position of senior vice president, commercial operations. Haigh joins Gentium with 28 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields. Most recently, he served as regional vice president of commercial operations for Biogen Idec.

Charles J. Homcy has been appointed to the board of directors of Cephalon (Frazer, PA, USA). Homcy is currently a partner at Third Rock Ventures and co-chairman of privately held Portola Pharmaceuticals, where he served as president and CEO from 2003 to 2010.

Gene therapy developer Oxford BioMedica (Oxford, UK) has announced that its chairman, Alan Kingsman, will step down at the company's annual general meeting in May 2011. Nick Rodgers, nonexecutive director, senior independent director and deputy chairman, will then become chairman.

Anadys Pharmaceuticals (San Diego) has appointed 20-year industry veteran Barry A. Labinger to its board of directors. Labinger has served as executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Human Genome Sciences since August 2005.

Alexandre P. LeBeaut has been named chief medical officer for emerging company bluebird bio (Cambridge, MA, USA). LeBeaut has more than 20 years of experience working with specialty pharma companies. He was most recently CSO at Axcan Pharma and before that, he was vice president, US medical affairs at Sanofi-aventis Pharmaceuticals.

Lithera (San Diego) has appointed George W. Mahaffey president, CEO and a member of the company's board of directors. John D. Dobak, founder and CEO of Lithera since its inception, will remain on the board of directors. Mahaffey has 24 years of industry experience, most recently serving as CEO of Peplin after its acquisition by LEO Pharma in 2009.

Cell-based immunotherapy developer TxCell (Valbonne, France) has announced the appointment of François Meyer (right) as its CEO. Meyer has more than 25 years of experience, beginning at Ciba-Geigy and continuing on at Sandoz, Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, Gencell and Aventis. Most recently he was CEO of Centelion.

George J. Morrow has been appointed to the Human Genome Sciences (Rockville, MD, USA) board of directors. He was formerly Amgen's executive vice president, global commercial operations, and previously executive vice president, worldwide sales and marketing.

GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK) has promoted Kieran Murphy to succeed current life sciences president and CEO Peter Ehrenheim, who will retire from GE on July 31, 2011. Murphy is currently GE Healthcare's head of global commercial operations, life sciences. He joined the company in 2008 upon its acquisition of Whatman, where he served as CEO. Ehrenheim is retiring after a career that began in 1983 with Pharmacia, which was acquired in 1997 by Amersham International. Appointed to the Amersham executive team in 2003, he was promoted to vice president and CEO, life sciences upon its acquisition by GE in 2004.

Dipak Panigrahi has left his position as senior vice president, R&D and chief medical officer of QLT (Vancouver, BC, Canada). Panigrahi joined QLT in April 2010.The company's clinical operations and product portfolio responsibilities will be assumed by Suzanne Cadden, vice president, regulatory affairs; and Anthony Pepio, executive director, ophthalmology development, will lead preclinical and formulations development.

Immatics Biotechnologies (Tuebingen, Germany) has named Harald F. Stock to its board of directors. Stock has been CEO of the Grünenthal Group since January 2009. Previously, he was chairman and managing director of the German DePuy Group, the orthopedics division of Johnson & Johnson.

Shinya Yamanaka, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (San Francisco), professor at Kyoto University (Japan) and director of Kyoto University's Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, received the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology. Yamanaka developed a technology for producing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells without using embryos—an achievement the San Francisco Chronicle reports as “likely to be the most important stem cell breakthrough of all time.”