Life science investment group Abingworth Management (London) has appointed Andy Sandham as a venture partner. Mr. Sandham has over 28 years of experience in the healthcare sector, most recently as CEO and cofounder of Ionix Pharmaceuticals. He previously served as COO of Signature BioScience, Hexagen and Cantab Pharmaceuticals, and held various business development and marketing positions at Amersham, Celltech and Roche. Managing director Stephen Bunting said, “Andy is a serial entrepreneur with valuable startup, strategic and operating experience that will add significant value to Abingworth. We believe that he will make a strong contribution to the growth and development of our portfolio companies.”

OncoGenex Technologies (Vancouver, BC, Canada) has named Stephen Anderson as CFO and Tom Bailey as a member of the board of directors. Mr. Anderson was most recently CFO at Perceptronix Medical. Mr. Bailey most recently led the biotech practice group at Credit Suisse First Boston and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, where he advised on over 50 completed transactions for biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

John Holaday has been elected to the board of directors of Xceleron (Heslington, UK). Dr. Holaday is the founder of EntreMed, and served as president, CEO and chairman of the board until his retirement in 2003. Prior to EntreMed, Dr. Holaday cofounded Medicis Pharmaceutical, where he served as the senior vice president for R&D and member of the board of directors. He is currently the founding partner of Montgomery Pacific Group, an investment bank specializing in emerging technology companies, and cofounder and chairman of HarVest Bank of Maryland.

Torben Jorgensen will succeed Jeff Bork as the CEO of Biotage (Uppsala, Sweden), effective on April 27, 2006 at the company's annual general assembly. Mr. Jorgensen has served for the past four years as CEO of Affibody. Prior to that, he held similar positions at Karo Bio and DAKO. Mr. Bork will continue as a board member of Biotage.

GenoLogics Life Sciences Software (Victoria, BC, Canada) has appointed Don Listwin to its board of directors. Mr. Listwin served as executive vice president for Cisco Systems until 2000, and was most recently president and CEO of Openwave Systems, a software and services provider for the communications industry. In 2004, he founded Canary Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the early detection of cancer.

David Peralta has been appointed to the position of vice president and CFO of NanoBio Corp. (Ann Arbor, MI, USA). Mr. Peralta brings over 15 years of financial and business management experience, most recently serving as vice president and CFO for Arbortext.

Andy Richards has been appointed as non-executive chairman of Geneservice (Cambridge, UK). Dr. Richards founded several biotech companies including Chiroscience, Arakis, Cambridge Biotechnology and Daniolabs. He holds directorships at Vectura, Daniolabs, Biowisdom, Babraham Bioscience Technology, Cancer Research Technology and the UK Bioindustry Association.

Industrial Biotechnology Corp. (Sarasota, FL, USA) has announced the appointment of biotech veteran Gurinder Shahi as chief technologist and chairman of its scientific advisory board. Dr. Shahi is chairman of BioEnterprise Asia and leads the Global BioBusiness Initiative at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He previously served as executive director/coordinator of the Asia-Pacific International Molecular Biology Network.

Former GlaxoSmithKline chairman Sir Richard B. Sykes has been appointed chairman of the board of directors of MerLion Pharmaceuticals (Singapore). Sir Richard was appointed chairman and CEO of Glaxo Wellcome in May 1997 and served as chairman of GlaxoSmithKline from 2000 to 2002. He is currently Rector of Imperial College London. Mr. Boon Swan Foo, managing director of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research, will step down as MerLion's chairman but will remain on the board.

Protedyne (Windsor, CT, USA) has named Fran Tuttle as president, CEO and a member of the company's board of directors, and Rolf Classon as chairman of the board. Ms. Tuttle was most recently senior vice president of near patient testing at Bayer Diagnostics, and prior to that, spent 20 years at Chiron Diagnostics (formerly Ciba Corning Diagnostics). Mr. Classon has served on Protedyne's board of directors since August 2004.

GenVec (Gaithersburg, MD, USA) has announced the appointment of Russell P. Wesdyk as vice president of business development and strategic planning, a newly created position. Mr. Wesdyk joins the company from Guilford Pharmaceuticals, where he served as vice president, business development, after spending 16 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb in various product and business development positions, most recently as director of corporate development.

Derek M. Winstanly has been named to the board of directors of Xanthus Life Sciences (Cambridge, MA, USA). He currently serves as executive vice president, strategic business partnerships for contract research organization Quintiles Transnational. Prior to Quintiles, he spent 15 years with Glaxo Wellcome, now GlaxoSmithKline, in various senior management roles.

Cylene Pharmaceuticals (San Diego, CA, USA) has appointed Larry D. Witte chief scientific officer. Dr. Witte has more than 25 years of industrial and academic experience, having served most recently as vice president of research and as a member of the executive steering committee at ImClone Systems.