Proclara Biosciences (Cambridge, MA, USA) has announced the appointment of David Michelson (right) as chief medical officer. Michelson joins the company from Merck Research Laboratories, where he served as vice president and therapeutic area head with responsibility for clinical research in neuroscience, pain, anesthesiology and ophthalmology.

“I am delighted to welcome David to Proclara. He is a seasoned leader, with deep research, clinical and regulatory expertise, including significant experience in neurology,” said Suzanne Bruhn, Proclara's president and CEO. “In particular, David's extraordinary track record guiding innovative early-stage programs through clinical development will prove invaluable, and we look forward to his contributions as we progress our pipeline of disease-modifying GAIM-based therapies for both neurodegenerative and orphan indications.”

Luna DNA (San Diego), a company hoping to leverage the blockchain to revolutionize how medical research is conducted, has named Dawn Barry as president. Barry joined Illumina in 2005 as its first market development specialist and has since held leadership roles in business units, sales and marketing for the company, most recently serving as vice president of applied genomics.

William “Bill” Baum has joined the board of directors of protein design company Arzeda (Seattle). Baum previously served as chief business development officer at Genomatica and was on the company's board of directors for ten years. He also serves as a board director at Gevo and Leaf Resources.

Laboratoris Sanifit (Palma, Spain, and San Diego) has named Cris Calsada as CFO. She was most recently COO and vice president of finance at Ambrx.

Cirius Therapeutics (San Diego, and Kalamazoo, MI, USA) has announced that Dennis Fenton has been appointed to its board of directors as an independent member. Fenton brings more than 40 years of experience in drug development and commercialization. During a 25-year tenure at Amgen, he served as executive vice president of operations and held numerous additional executive leadership roles. Since retiring from Amgen in 2008, he has served as an independent biotech consultant and serves on several public and private company boards including Portola Pharmaceuticals, Pfenex, Sienna Biopharmaceuticals, Omniox and Modern Meadow.

Selexis (Geneva) has appointed Alberto Garotti CFO. Garotti joins Selexis with nearly 30 years of experience leading the financial operations of international companies including Unilever and Coty. He was most recently president of Evolve Consulting.

Synpromics (Edinburgh, UK) has announced the appointment of Sarah Haecker Meeks as vice president, business development. Since 2016, Haecker Meeks has served as a business development consultant for Synpromics. She previously served as CSO at Adjuvant Partners helped found Cardiogen Sciences, and was the director, technology sections, at the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, managing the gene therapy section and the genome editing task force.

Peter Ho has been named chief medical officer at Boston Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA, USA). He joins the company from Epizyme, where he served in the same capacity. Prior to joining Epizyme, Ho was co-founder and president of BeiGene.

Glythera (Newcastle, UK) has announced the appointment of 25-year industry veteran Robert Lutz (right) as CSO. He was previously vice president of translation R&D at ImmunoGen. In addition, Glythera has appointed Jon Roffey to the company's scientific advisory board. Roffey joins the board from Cancer Research Technology, Cancer Research UK's commercial partnerships team, where he has been working since 2006.

Sanuj K. Ravindran has been appointed president and CEO of PellePharm (Menlo Park, CA, USA). He also joins BridgeBio Pharma, PellePharm's lead investor, as CEO-in-residence. Ravindran brings over 15 years of strategic and operational biopharma experience to PellePharm, most recently, as chief business officer at aTyr Pharma. Previously, he was senior vice president of corporate development for The Medicines Company.

Tarveda Therapeutics (Watertown, MA, USA) has announced the appointment of Brian Roberts as CFO. Roberts has nearly 25 years of finance, capital markets and operations experience in the life sciences, medtech and media industries, most recently at Avedro, where he served as chief financial and operating officer and interim CEO.

Rare disease company Orchard Therapeutics (London) has named Frank Thomas to the newly created position of CFO and chief business officer. Thomas brings nearly 20 years of experience in the biopharma industry. He was most recently president and COO of AMAG Pharmaceuticals. Previously, he served as COO and CFO for Molecular Biometrics.

Cancer immunotherapy developer Immatics (Tübingen, Germany, and Houston) has named Thomas Ulmer as CFO effective April 1. Ulmer will join Immatics from the Merck Group, where he is currently CFO of the Allergopharma business unit. He has held a number of roles at the Merck Group, including head of business planning and analysis, and head of planning, forecasting and resource allocation.

CANbridge Life Sciences (Beijing) has announced the appointment of Sunny Zhang as vice president of regulatory affairs and quality, a newly created position. Prior to joining CANbridge, she was the head of regulatory affairs at Novartis Oncology China. Zhang previously served on the R&D-based Pharmaceutical Association Committee, a Chinese pharmaceutical industry association, as chair of its orphan drug task force.