People

Endogen, Inc. (Woburn, MA) has announced the appointment of Christine A. Burns as vice president of product development and technology. Most recently, Dr. Burns was vice president, contract R&D services at PerSeptive Biosystems, a division of Perkin-Elmer.

Discovery Partners International (San Diego, CA) has announced that David L. Coffen has joined the company as its chief scientific officer. Dr. Coffen was formerly senior vice president of chemistry at ArQule, as well as vice president, molecular sciences at Hoffmann-La Roche.

Scios Inc. (Mountain View, CA) has announced the appointment of David W. Gryska as chief financial officer. Mr. Gryska served as a partner at Ernst & Young, and most recently was vice president and CFO at Cardiac Pathways.

Roger J. Lias has joined Covance (Princeton, NJ) as vice president, business development for its biotechnology services business. Previously, Dr. Lias served as director of commercial development and marketing for Lonza Biologics.

Martek Biosciences (Columbia, MD) has named Gordon S. Macklin to its board of directors. Mr. Macklin is the former president of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASDAQ) and former chairman of Hambrecht & Quist, and currently serves on the boards of several companies including Worldcom and MedImmune. Mr. Macklin replaces Bruce E. Elmblad, who recently retired from Martek's board.

Joanne Nardone has been named director of business strategy, molecular medicine for SmithKline Beecham (Philadelphia, PA). She joins the company from Millennium Pharmaceuticals, where she served as director of business development.

The board of directors of CoCensys (Irvine, CA) have unanimously elected F. Richard Nichol to the position of chairman of the board. Dr. Nichol joined CoCensys as president, CEO, and a board member in January 1997. CoCensys' outgoing chairman, Lowell E. Sears, will remain on the board following Dr. Nichol's appointment.

Bengt Samuelsson and Jorgen Buus Lassen have been appointed to the board of directors of NicOx S.A. (Sophia Antipolis, France). Dr. Samuelsson is professor of physiological chemistry at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and a recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Dr. Lassen is president and CEO of NeuroSearch A/S, a Danish neuroscience company.

Kosan Biosciences (Burlingame, CA) has appointed Daniel V. Santi, president and CEO. Dr. Santi is a co-founder and the chairman of Kosan. He is on a leave of absence from his position as professor of biochemistry and biophysics, and of pharmaceutical chemistry at University of California, San Francisco. Kosan also announced that Michael S. Ostrach, vice president, corporate development, has been appointed to the newly created position of chief operating officer.

Larry Tannenbaum has been named senior vice president and CFO of LJL Biosystems (Sunnyvale, CA). Mr. Tannenbaum joins LJL from Sinogen, where he had been vice president and CFO since 1997.

Grace Yeh has been named to the newly created position of chief scientific officer of CytoMed (Cambridge, MA), where she is currently vice president of product development. Dr. Yeh joined CytoMed in 1991.

See "Answers to quiz on page 90".

Box 1: Answers to quiz on page 90

1. In a thin year for biotechnology IPOs, North American companies just shaded the lion's share of the pot. 13 US companies and 1 Canadian raised $333.4 million: 7 European companies raised $286.4 million. The top three in 1998 were Pharming (Leiden, The Netherlands) with $70.8 million; Nanogen (San Diego, CA) with $63.9 million; and Transgene (Strasbourg, France) with $57.2 million. European companies took 6 of the top 10 places. 2. (a) Phylos (Lexington, MA); (b) Monsanto (St. Louis, MO); (c) Diversa (San Diego, CA); (d) Hybridon (Milford, MA); (e) Metabolex (Hayward, CA)   3. American Home Products and Smithkline Beecham. AHP and SB first tried merging with each other but in January, SB got what it thought was a better offer from Glaxo Wellcome. The Glaxo Wellcome-SB merger failed because of wrangling between the companies' managements over succession top jobs. Then, over the summer, AHP thought it had hooked Monsanto. That fell through when it became clear that Monsanto was only after AHP's money to support its spending spree in the seed markets.  4. Germany (Nature Biotechnology 16:511, June 1998); Apik is marketing an antimugging device that as well as producing the usual ear-piercing alarm also punctures the skin of the assailant, collecting a sample for DNA analysis (Nature Biotechnology 16:605, July 1998).   5. Choose any 3 from the following 10 companies: Bio Logicals; Bio-Response; Biotech Research Labs; Biotechnica International; Cetus; Damon Biotech; Genetic Engineering; Genex; Monoclonal Antibodies; or Summa Medical (Nature Biotechnology 16:241, March 1998).  6. Korea (Nature Biotechnology 16:151, February 1998).  7. (a) ProScript (Cambridge, MA); (b) CeNes (Cambridge, UK); (c) Oxford GlycoScience (Abingdon, UK); (d) AngioGene (Montreal, Canada); (e) DeveloGen (Gottingen, Germany).  8. Urine. Bob Wall and colleagues at the US Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, MD, produced human growth hormone by creating mice that expressed trangenes in their bladder epithelium (January p. 75)  9. (a) De; (b) Max; (c) Medi; (d) Ribo; (e) Cen; (f) Trans; (g) Phy  10. S. cerevisiae (May 1995); H. pylori (Sep. 1997); M. genitalium (Oct. 1997); B. subtilis (Nov. 1997); M. jannaschii (Jan. 1998); M. tuberculosis (June 1998); T. pallidum (July 1998); R. prowazekii (Nov. 1998); C. elegans (Dec. 1998)   11. Biolistics, the technique for propelling DNA on particles into tissue, which was invented by John Sanford at Cornell University. He used it successfully to transform onions, among other plants. The license to use the technique to deliver DNA to humans now rests with a small Oxford company called PowderJect Pharmaceuticals who signed a deal with Glaxo Wellcome in March 1998 concerning the development of a delivery system for DNA vaccines (Nature Biotechnology 16:309, April 1998).  12. Recombinant human insulin. Hoechst applied for permission to produce the hormone in 1984. On March 16, 1998, the (then) German Research Minister, Jürgen Rüttgers, opened the insulin plant (Nature Biotechnology 16:409, May 1998)  13. (a) Ceres (Los Angeles, CA), a startup focusing on agricultural genetics, which formed an alliance with Genset (Paris) in January; (b) Iterex Technologies (Boulder, CO), which split from NeXstar Pharmaceuticals in October; (c) Max Plank Institute's agbiotechnology startup, Metanomics (Golm, Germany), shares it name with Rosenstock-Huessy's theological approach, which forms "the frame for the joyous exultations of life;" (d) Celera Genomics, formed by Perkin Elmer and The Institute for Genomic Research in May, to "swiftly provide pharmaceutical companies and researchers the information contained in the complete human genome."  14. (a) News of a benchmark paper in Science (279:349–352, 1998), reporting extension of the lifespan of normal human cells using cloned telomerase; (b) Adrian Bebb, a spokesperson for Friends of the Earth, responding to a Nature report describing a transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana that suprisingly was 20-fold more likely than a corresponding mutant to outcross with a wild-type Arabidopsis, going against years of research; (c) A highly controversial bill to create a nationwide computerized database of health records in Iceland, the most likely licensee of which is deCODE Genetics (Reykjavik, Iceland) in the words of Bryndis Hlodversdottir, a member of Iceland's parliament, and Kari Stefansson, deCODE's CEO, respectively.