Sutro Biopharma (S. San Francisco, CA, USA), formerly known as Fundamental Applied Biology, has announced the appointment of William J. Newell (right) as CEO. Newell most recently served as the president of Aerovance. He was also the chief business officer of QLT and senior vice president, corporate and business development at Celera Genomics. Daniel S. Gold, Sutro's previous CEO, becomes president and COO.

“I am very pleased to join Sutro Biopharma,” says Newell. “Open Cell-Free Synthesis (OCFS) technology has enormous advantages for the development of therapeutic proteins including those with novel scaffolds, such as antibody derivatives like Fab's and scFv's, that are challenging to make using conventional mammalian, yeast and bacterial systems. This novel system takes cell-free protein synthesis to an entirely new and advanced level, and I look forward to helping the company realize the commercial potential of this technology.”

Illumina (San Diego) has appointed Bill Bonnar as senior vice president of operations, a newly created role. He joins the company from KLA-Tencor, where he served in the same capacity.

Amir Elstein has joined Teva Pharmaceutical Industries' (Jerusalem) board of directors. He had been a member of Teva's senior management since 2005, most recently as executive vice president, global pharmaceutical resources. Elstein has resigned his executive position with the company to rejoin its board of directors. He previously served on the company's board from 1995 to 2004.

Auspex Pharmaceuticals (Vista, CA, USA) has announced the appointment of Michael Grey as president, CEO and a member of the board of directors, and R. Gary Gilmore as CFO. Grey was previously president and CEO of SGX Pharmaceuticals, which was recently acquired by Eli Lilly. Gilmore has over 20 years experience in corporate finance, most recently as CFO of Althea Technologies.

NextBio (Cupertino, CA, USA) has named Andrew Grygiel as vice president of marketing. He comes to the company with more than 20 years of high-technology marketing experience, most recently as senior vice president of global marketing at Orchestria. Previously he was vice president of global industries for EMC's information and content management software group. In addition, Sergio Gurrieri has been appointed senior director of business development, with responsibility for identifying new growth opportunities and strategic business development initiatives.

Robert M. Kennedy has joined Venomix (Kalamazoo, MI, USA) as vice president of research. He was most recently a director of International Discovery Sourcing Consultants and a founder of Metabalog. Previously he directed the cardiovascular chemistry, PET chemistry and combinatorial chemistry groups at Pfizer Global Research and Development in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Ablynx (Ghent, Belgium) has named Debbie Law as its chief scientific officer. Law has over 13 years experience in the biotech industry, previously holding the position of vice president of research at PDL BioPharma as well as senior research positions with EOS Biotechnology and COR Therapeutics.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals (Aliso Viejo, CA, USA) has named Anders Lonner to its board of directors. Lonner has been group president and CEO and a board member of Meda AB since 1999. Before joining Meda, he was vice president, Nordic region for Astra and then CEO of KaroBio.

Kiwa Bio-Tech Products Group (Beijing) has announced the resignation of Lianjun Luo as chief financial officer, a position he held since March 2004. Luo remains as a director of the company.

Nicole Onetto, senior vice president and chief medical officer of ZymoGenetics and Eric K. Rowinsky, executive vice president and chief medical officer of ImClone Systems, have joined the board of directors of Symphony ViDA (Rockville, MD, USA), a drug development company established in October 2008 by Symphony Capital Partners in collaboration with OXiGENE (Waltham, MA, USA).

Bruce A. Peacock and Steven J. Burakoff have joined the board of directors of Ligand Pharmaceuticals (San Diego), In addition, Jeff Perry, who has served as a Ligand director since December 2005, has resigned from the board. Peacock is president and CEO of Alba Therapeutics, and has also been a venture partner with SV Life Sciences since May 2006. Burakoff is a director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, where he also serves as professor of medicine and professor of oncological sciences.

Antibiotics developer Nabriva Therapeutics (Vienna) has appointed William Prince chief medical officer. Prince has had 15 years of experience developing antibiotics, antifungals and antivirals at GlaxoSmithKline. He joins Nabriva Therapeutics from Surface Logix, where he served as chief development officer.

Champions Biotechnology (Arlington, VA, USA) has appointed three key executives: Mark Schonau, most recently chief financial officer (CFO) for Insys Therapeutics, as CFO; Sara Parkerson, formerly vice president of oncology services for Matria Healthcare, as director of personalized oncology services US; and Elizabeth Bruckheimer, a cancer biologist and pharmacologist, as director of preclinical development. Durwood C. Settles, who had served as acting CFO, has been named the company's controller.

Abraxis BioScience (Los Angeles) has announced that in connection with its strategic plan to spin off Abraxis Health, it has named Lex H.T. Van der Ploeg as senior vice president of integrative medicine and translational science. Van der Ploeg has over 25 years of experience in enzymology, biochemistry and genetics. For the past four years he has served as vice president, basic research, and site head of the Merck Research Laboratory in Boston.