Labopharm (Laval, Quebec, Canada) has announced the appointment of Mark D'Souza (right) as CFO. Mr. D'Souza has held senior financial management positions, most recently as vice president, finance at Quebecor Media, and previously finance director of the Société Générale de Financement du Quebec. He succeeds Warren Whitehead, who is leaving Labopharm to pursue other opportunities.

BIOIDENT Technologies (Menlo Park, CA, USA), a startup developer of printed semiconductor-based photonic lab-on-a-chip solutions for life sciences, has named Wasiq Bokhari as CEO and Max Sonnleitner as chief technology officer. Dr. Bokhari is a cofounder and managing partner of Quantum Insight and business advisor to Chevron and Hitachi in the areas of emerging life sciences, electronics and energy applications. Dr. Sonnleitner was most recently vice president, R&D life science for NANOIDENT, BIOIDENT's Vienna-based parent company.

Inflazyme Pharmaceuticals (Vancouver, BC, Canada) has announced the appointment of Jeremy Curnock Cook as chairman of the board of directors, succeeding John Hodgman, who has resigned his position because of increased commitments resulting from his recent appointment as senior vice president and CFO at InterMune. Mr. Curnock Cook is currently the executive chairman of Bioscience Managers Ltd., a corporate and investment advisory company based in London. He has been an independent director at Inflazyme since 1997.

The Immune Response Corp. (Carlsbad, CA, USA) has announced the appointment of James L. Foght as a director. He is managing partner of Foght Enterprises and managing director and a member of the investment committee of Vector Later-Stage Equity Funds, specializing in investments in the life sciences.

Pharming Group (Leiden, the Netherlands) has appointed Bruno Giannetti as its COO effective December 1, and has nominated him as a member of the board of management, subject to shareholder approval. Dr. Giannetti is currently CEO of AM Pharma and is the founder of CRM, a European clinical research organization.

Peter Goodfellow has been named to deCODE Genetics' (Reykjavik, Iceland) board of directors. Dr. Goodfellow was until recently senior vice president for discovery research at GlaxoSmithKline. Prior to this post, he held senior positions at SmithKline Beecham, the Balfour chair in genetics at Cambridge University and research positions at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals (Rockville, MD, USA) has announced the resignation of Wayne T. Hockmeyer from its board of directors. Dr. Hockmeyer, founder and chairman of the board of MedImmune, has served as a member of Vanda's board since 2004. Vanda also announced that H. Thomas Watkins has been appointed to the company's board. Mr. Watkins will serve as a member of the board's compensation and nominating/corporate governance committee. Mr. Watkins is president, CEO and a member of the board of Human Genome Sciences.

Mark Leuchtenberger has been named president and CEO of privately held antibacterial drug developer Targanta Therapeutics (Indianapolis, IN, USA). Mr. Leuchtenberger joins the company from Therion Biologics, where he was formerly president and CEO. Pierre E.G. Etienne, who has served as CEO for three years, will assume a new role as chief development officer for Targanta.

Kathleen P. Mullinix has been appointed as CEO of WellGen (New Brunswick, NJ, USA), which uses nutrigenomics to discover and develop food ingredients for wellness products. She succeeds David A. Evans, who passed away suddenly on June 1. Dr. Mullinix is a 30-year industry veteran, having served as founder, chairman, CEO and president of Synaptic Pharmaceutical and, since 2002, as a consultant to life science companies.

Surface Logix (Boston) has named W. James O'Shea to the company's board of directors. Currently, Mr. O'Shea is president and COO at Sepracor.

Stelios Papadopoulos has announced his resignation as vice chairman of Cowen and Co. Dr. Papadopoulos has covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industries as an investment banker beginning at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, and moving on to Drexel Burnham Lambert and PaineWebber before joining Cowen in 2000. In addition, he has announced his resignation from his position as a director on the boards of several biotech companies. To date, SGX Pharmaceuticals (San Diego) and GenVec (Gaithersburg, MD, USA) have confirmed Dr. Papadopoulos' resignation from their boards.

Venture capital firm Venrock Associates (Menlo Park, CA, USA) has named two new venture partners: Bill Rastetter, based in Menlo Park, and David Molowa, based in New York. Dr. Rastetter served as president and CEO of Idec Pharmaceuticals from 1986 to 2003 and was most recently executive chairman of Biogen Idec. Dr. Molowa was a managing director at UBS Securities, overseeing research in life science equities. Prior to that, he also directed similar research at JP Morgan Securities and at Bear Stearns & Co. From 1987–1991 he was a senior research biochemist at Merck and Co.

Dinu Sen has been named CEO of Avera Pharmaceuticals (San Diego), replacing founding president and CEO Jeffrey F. McKelvy, who will transition to president and chief technical officer. Mr. Sen joins Avera from Corus Pharma, where he had been chief commercial officer since 2004. Previously, he served as president and COO at Cubist Pharmaceuticals.

Mark Wong has been appointed to the board of directors of agbiotech company Arcadia Biosciences (Davis, CA, USA). Mr. Wong has more than 30 years of industry experience, as CEO and founder of Renewable Agricultural Energy and Emergent Genetics, and as CEO of Agracetus, a W.R. Grace subsidiary that was purchased by Monsanto. In addition, Mr. Wong is currently a partner at the investment and consulting firm Big Stone Partners.