Eyevensys (Paris) has announced the appointment of Ivan Cohen-Tanugi (right) as CEO. Cohen-Tanugi has more than 20 years of industry experience, most recently serving as vice president and general manager of the biologics and specialty unit at Teva Pharmaceuticals USA. He previously worked at Roche Pharma, Amgen International and Sanofi.

“Ivan Cohen-Tanugi's extensive experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological fields will contribute to Eyevensys's ability to move at a faster pace and proceed to the clinical phase in the best possible circumstances,” says Francine Behar-Cohen, Eyevensys's founder and scientific advisor. “Our key goal is to discover proofs of concept for the electrotransfer process in humans.”

Matthias Alder has been appointed executive vice president for corporate development and legal affairs of Cytos Biotechnology (Zurich-Schlieren, Switzerland). Alder has more than 19 years of business, transactional and legal experience in the biopharma industry, most recently serving as senior vice president, administration, general counsel and secretary of Micromet. In addition, Cheryl Lassen has been named vice president for clinical development, succeeding the retiring Philipp Mueller. Lassen joins Cytos from Novartis where she was program leader for the global clinical development of the indacaterol program.

Poxel (Lyon, France) has named Khoso Baluch to its board of directors. He is currently senior vice president and president, European region for UCB after having worked for Eli Lilly & Co. for 24 years.

Aeterna Zentaris (Quebec City, Quebec, Canada) has appointed David A. Dodd president and CEO, succeeding Juergen Engel. Dodd has also been appointed to the company's board of directors. He previously served as president, CEO and chairman of BioReliance, chairman of Stem Cell Sciences and president, CEO and director of Serologicals Corp. Currently, he serves as chairman of the board of GeoVax, a director on the boards of Aruna Biomedical and PNP Therapeutics, and CEO of RiversEdge BioVentures.

Novavax (Rockville, MD, USA) has announced the appointment of Amy B. Fix as vice president of regulatory affairs. She served most recently as senior director of regulatory affairs at Emergent Biosolutions.

Oramed Pharmaceuticals (Jerusalem) has announced the appointment of Joshua Hexter as COO and vice president of business development. Hexter has over 15 years of biotech industry experience, most recently serving as executive director of corporate in-licensing at BioLineRx.

Douglas Howe, Craig Mundie and Drew Senyei have been named to the board of directors of the Institute for Systems Biology (Seattle). Howe is president and founder of commercial real estate company Touchstone Corp.; Mundie serves as senior advisor to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft; and Senyei is managing director of Enterprise Partners Venture Capital.

Cardiome Pharma (Vancouver, BC, Canada) has made the following changes to its senior management team: William Hunter, previously interim CEO and director, has been appointed full-time president and CEO; Karim Lalji, previously senior vice president of commercial affairs, has been made chief commercial officer; and Sheila Grant, most recently vice president of product development, has been named COO.

Ziarco (Canterbury, UK) has named John L. LaMattina as strategic advisor. LaMattina is a senior partner at PureTech and previously served as president, Pfizer global R&D and senior vice president.

Thi-Sau Migone has been appointed CSO of antibody therapeutic developer Igenica (Burlingame, CA, USA). She joins Igenica from Human Genome Sciences, where she most recently served as vice president of research.

Covagen (Zurich-Schlieren, Switzerland) has named Elias Papatheodorou as chief business officer. Prior to joining Covagen, Papatheodorou was senior vice president, business development and operations at Medigene.

David R. Parkinson has been appointed to the board of directors of Ambit Biosciences (San Diego). He is a partner at venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates and a member of the board of directors for Threshold Pharmaceuticals and Zyngenia. Previous positions include president and CEO of Nodality, senior vice president of oncology research at Biogen Idec, and vice president of oncology development at Amgen.

William H. Rastetter has been elected to Regulus Therapeutics' (La Jolla, CA, USA) board of directors. Formerly chairman and CEO of IDEC Pharmaceuticals, chairman of Biogen Idec and partner in the venture capital firm Venrock, he currently serves as the chairman of the boards of Fate Therapeutics, Illumina, Neurocrine Biosciences and Receptos.

GW Pharmaceuticals (Porton Down, UK) has named Stephen D. Schultz vice president, investor relations, a newly created position. He previously served as senior director of investor relations and corporate communications at Amarin. Schultz will be based in the United States.

Epigenomics (Berlin) has announced the appointment of Uwe Staub to the executive board. Staub joined Epigenomics in November 2008 as senior vice president for product development and was promoted to COO in September 2012.

Willem “Pim” Stemmer passed away on April 3, 2013. The cause of death was melanoma. A pioneering protein engineer, Stemmer founded his first company, Genetic Designs, in 1985. Later, working as a research scientist at Affymax, he invented and developed DNA shuffling, which led to the creation of his next startup, Maxygen. All in all, he founded six biotech companies including Avidia, Verdia, Codexis, Amunix and Versartis.