GeneGo (St. Joseph, MI, USA) has appointed Richard Brennan (left) director of toxicology. Previously, he served as director of molecular and investigative toxicology at Iconix Biosciences. In addition, Dr. Brennan will lead the MetaTox Consortium, a joint industry and government effort focused on development of systems biology tools for prediction of human toxicity of new compounds.

“At this point, the field of mammalian systems biology is getting diversified in specific application areas, such as common human diseases, drug safety and medicinal chemistry. Development of next-generation products in these areas requires leaders with solid domain expertise, and Richard is both a Board-certified expert toxicologist and a developer of systems analysis tools,” says GeneGo founder and CSO Tatiana Nikolskaya. “The MetaTox project, partially supported by our NIEHS [National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences] phase 2 grant, will include toxicity ontologies, signature networks and functional descriptors models for different types of toxicity, as well as manual annotation of toxicity relevant pathways in human, rat, mouse and in vitro models.”

Halozyme Therapeutics (San Diego) has named Walter Bee vice president, preclinical development. Dr. Bee was previously director of toxico-logy, pathology and laboratory animal medicine at Johnson & Johnson, where he was responsible for global preclinical development on the West Coast.

Biomira (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) has appointed Gary Christianson to the newly created position of COO. Mr. Christianson most recently served as site director of GlaxoSmithKline's biologics unit in Hamilton, Montana.

Tim Cook has been appointed to the board of directors of Oxford Gene Technology (Oxford, UK). Dr. Cook has spent the last ten years as executive director at Isis Innovation, the technology transfer company of Oxford University. Previously, he was a private investor and founding managing director of Oxford Semiconductor and Oxford Asymmetry, a spinout from Oxford University.

ImClone Systems (New York) has appointed Thomas F. Deuel a director of the company. Since February 2002, Dr. Deuel has served as a professor of molecular and experimental medicine and cell biology, director of the division of molecular oncology, and director of the vascular biology affinity group at The Scripps Research Institute.

Martin I. Freed has been named to the newly created role of chief medical officer at Adnexus Therapeutics (Waltham, MA, USA). Dr. Freed previously served as vice president of clinical development at GlaxoSmithKline, and was most recently chief medical officer at Vitae Pharmaceuticals.

J. William Freytag has been named Aspreva Pharmaceuticals' (Victoria, BC, Canada) chairman and CEO, succeeding Richard Glickman. Dr. Freytag was most recently president, CEO and chairman of Myogen, which was acquired by Gilead Sciences in 2006.

Abhay Joshi has been named president, CEO and a director of Alvine Pharmaceuticals (San Carlos, CA, USA). Dr. Joshi has over 18 years of global operations and R&D experience. Most recently, he served as executive vice president, chief technical officer at CoTherix.

Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (New York) has announced that William P. Kane has joined the company as vice president, commercial operations. He joins Keryx from Sepracor, where he served as senior vice president of marketing and new product planning. Previously, Mr. Kane spent 18 years at Pfizer, latterly serving as group vice president, managed markets marketing, where he played a key role in preparing Pfizer for the implementation of Medicare Part D.

BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics (New York; Petah Tikvah, Israel) has announced the election of Moshe Lion to its board of directors. Mr. Lion is a senior partner of Lion, Orlitzky and Co. and also serves as a director in Elbit Medical Imaging. Previously, he was chairman of Israel Railways and served as director general of the Israeli Prime Minister's Office as well as an economic advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister.

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (Birmingham, AL, USA) CEO Jon P. Stonehouse has been named to the additional position of president, succeeding J. Claude Bennett. Mr. Bennett will remain in his role as COO. Mr. Stonehouse joined BioCryst in January from Merck KGaA, where he served as senior vice president of corporate development.

Lewis Stuart has been appointed as CV Therapeutics' (Palo Alto, CA, USA) senior vice president, commercial operations, succeeding David McCaleb who will continue to serve as a consultant to the company. Mr. Stuart has held senior US and European sales and marketing positions in the biotech sector, including six years as vice president, sales at Agouron Pharmaceuticals.

LS9 (San Carlos, CA, USA) has named Fernando Valle (left) senior director of metabolic engineering. Dr. Valle has 25 years of experience in the field of genetic and metabolic engineering. He previously served as director of metabolic engineering and as staff scientist at Genencor.

Privately held structural biology company Shamrock Structures (Chicago) has announced the appointment of Richard L. Walter as CSO. He has over ten years experience in pharmaceutical and consumer products research, most recently as associate research fellow at Pfizer in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

PharmaKodex (Chippenham, UK) has announced the appointment of Bradley Wilson as nonexecutive chairman. Mr. Wilson was previously chairman of European pharmaceuticals at SmithKline Beecham. Most recently, he cofounded and served as CEO of OnMedica.