Relay Therapeutics (Cambridge, MA, USA) has announced the appointments of Don Bergstrom (right) as executive vice president, head of research and development, Brian Adams as general counsel, and Tom Catinazzo as vice president of finance. Bergstrom was most recently chief medical officer at Mersana Therapeutics and previously global head of translational and experimental medicine at Sanofi Oncology. Adams joins Relay from Keryx Biopharmaceuticals, where he served as senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary. Catinazzo was previously vice president of financial planning and analysis at Foundation Medicine.

“We welcome Don, Brian, and Tom to the senior team at Relay Therapeutics. These seasoned leaders will help us to deliver transformational therapies using our novel integrated experimental and computational platform,” said CEO Sanjiv Patel. “We will continue to grow and add team members as our portfolio matures towards clinical development, and anticipate a move to our new headquarters in late 2018.

Compugen (Holon, Israel) has named Henry Adewoye to the newly created position of chief medical officer. Adewoye brings over 20 years of experience in leading multiple clinical trials in oncology and hematology in both the biopharma industry and academia. He joins Compugen from Gilead Sciences, where he most recently served as clinical director in oncology clinical research.

Astellas (Northbrook, IL, USA) has announced the appointment of Tatjana Dragovic as head, ethics and compliance. She succeeds Catherine Wertjes, who is retiring after 18 years with Astellas. Dragovic joined Astellas in 2007 as senior corporate attorney and has held positions of increasing responsibility from assistant general counsel to associate general counsel, litigation.

NEOMED Therapeutics 1 (Montreal) has named Francis J. Giles to the newly created position of chief medical officer. Previously, Giles served as deputy director and director of developmental therapeutics at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, and as chief of the division of hematology/oncology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Cellular and immune therapeutics company Gamida Cell (Cambridge, MA, USA) has named Shai Lankry as CFO, succeeding Naftali Brikashvili, who will step into the role of vice president, finance and operations. Lankry brings more than a decade of senior management experience. He previously served as a finance director at West Pharmaceutical Services and as CFO and Israeli site manager at Macrocure.

Edward Dongheng Liu has been appointed CFO of BeyondSpring (New York). Liu has over a decade of senior banking experience, having served in roles of increasing responsibility at J.P. Morgan and Jefferies. Prior to joining BeyondSpring, he served as partner and executive director at Epiphron Capital, an early investor in BeyondSpring.

Clinical-stage biopharma company Intezyne (Tampa, FL, USA) has promoted CFO E. Russell McAllister to president and CEO. McAllister joined Intezyme in late 2016.

Dotmatics (Bishop's Stortford, UK) has appointed Gordon McCall as CFO. McCall had been serving as interim CFO while in his previous position as an associate director of specialist financial consultancy firm Craig Corporate Ltd.

Orchard Therapeutics (London) has announced the additions of Jason Meyenburg as chief commercial officer and John Ilett as general counsel and company secretary. Meyenburg served most recently as chief commercial officer at Sucampo Pharmaceuticals and Vtesse. Prior to joining Orchard, Ilett was a non-executive director at Oxular Ltd. and group general counsel and company secretary at Consort Medical.

James C. Mullen (right) has been named chairman of the board of directors of genome editing company Editas Medicine (Cambridge, MA, USA). Mullen has more than 30 years of experience building biotech and pharma organizations on a global scale. He previously served as CEO of Patheon and president and CEO of Biogen.

Surrozen (San Francisco) has announced the appointments of Craig Parker as CEO and Hans Clevers as scientific co-founder. Parker, previously senior vice president, corporate development at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, will replace Tim Kutzkey, a managing partner at The Column Group, who will assume the role of chairman of the board. Clevers is professor of molecular genetics at the Hubrecht Institute, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

UnitedHealth Group (Minneapolis) has announced that Larry C. Renfro, vice chair of UnitedHealth Group and CEO of Optum, will lead UnitedHealth Group's enterprise growth efforts and Optum's next-generation investment initiatives through an expanded Optum Ventures. In addition, Andrew Witty, former CEO of GlaxoSmithKline and a member of the UnitedHealth Group board of directors since August 2017, will succeed Renfro as CEO of Optum, effective July 1.

Jennifer Schranz has been appointed chief medical officer of clinical-stage Nabriva Therapeutics (Dublin and King of Prussia, PA, USA). She joins the company from Shire with nearly two decades of experience in clinical development and medical affairs, serving most recently as the rare disease global development team lead.

Genomics-powered health intelligence company Human Longevity (San Diego) has announced the appointment of Scott Sorensen as chief technology officer (CTO). Sorensen joins the company from Ancestry, where he held a variety of positions during his 16-year career, starting as director of engineering and culminating as CTO.