Teva Names New CEO
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries named Erez Vigodman President and CEO. Vigodman was previously President and CEO of Makhteshim Agan Industries (MAI), the world’s leading generic agrochemical company. He returned MAI to profitability by improving day-to-day operations and investing in areas to drive organic growth. From 2009 to 2012, MAI sales grew by CAGR of 9%, operating income by 33% and net income by 55%. He also led the expansion of MAI into emerging markets across Asia and Latin America and engineered a reverse merger with ChemChina, giving MAI access to the Chinese market.
HealthcarePays Adds a New Chairman to its Board of Directors
Tommy G. Thompson has been named Chairman of the Board of HealthcarePays, an industry-owned “payment network” designed to cut healthcare costs by effectively reducing waste and fraud. “It makes little sense that the U.S. has no overarching healthcare industry payment network to check for fraud and authorize payments by examining all the payments in the system, similar to what is in place in our financial services sector. I’m joining HealthcarePays to establish the first industry-owned network of this kind,” he says. Thompson was the 42nd Governor of the State of Wisconsin from 1987 to 2001, and served from 2001 to 2005 as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). He reorganized HHS, increased funding to the National Institutes of Health, increased the responsiveness of the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid and worked through a backlog of waiver requests, thereby providing health insurance to 1.8 million low-income Americans.
BioAgilytix
Jim Datin is now CEO at BioAgilytix Labs. Datin was previously EVP and Managing Director at Safeguard Scientifics. Earlier he was Chairman of the Board at Clarient and Laureate Pharmaceuticals and President at Dendrite International. He was also an executive with GlaxoSmithKline and Baxter Healthcare.
Biocom
President and CEO of Biocom, Joseph D. Panetta has been appointed to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s (CIRM) Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee by Governor Jerry Brown. Biocom, the association for the Southern California life sciences community, represents more than 600 member companies in Southern California. CIRM makes grants and provides loans for stem cell research, research facilities and other vital research.
Cardica
Cardica, a medical device company, named Liam Burns as Vice President, Sales and Marketing. Burns previously served as president of a strategic marketing and sales practice, VP of Marketing at Power Medical Interventions, and Group Marketing Director for biosurgicals at Johnson & Johnson-Ethicon.
Celtaxsys
Celtaxsys, a drug discovery company focused on orphan inflammatory and pulmonary disease, named Greg Duncan as President and CEO. Duncan was previously President of North America for Brussels-based UCB, prior to which he served as a Senior Vice President at Pfizer.
Encision
Greg Trudel is the new President and CEO of Encision, a medical device company. Previously, Trudel served as Global Director of Marketing for a division within the Surgical Solutions Group at Covidien. Earlier, he held leadership roles with companies including Stryker.
GSW
GSW, an inVentiv Health company, named Marci Piasecki President of GSW East. She will oversee the agency’s New York City and Newtown, Pennsylvania offices and serve as managing director of inVentiv Health Communications Media 360 and inVentiv Creative Studios. She previously led five healthcare communications companies for McCann Health North America.
Heptares Therapeutics
Heptares, a GPCR structure-guided drug discovery and development company, named Dr. Tim Tasker Chief Medical Officer and VP of Development. Tasker spent more than 20 years at GlaxoSmithKline, leading all of its Phase 1 Clinical Research Units (in the U.S., U.K., Europe and Australia).
ISTO Technologies
ISTO Technologies, a privately held orthobiological regenerative medicine company, appointed George W. Dunbar, Jr., as President and CEO. He joins ISTO from Arboretum Ventures, where as a venture partner he evaluated investment opportunities in diagnostics, life science tools, and medical devices.
Juno
Juno Therapeutics, a new biotechnology company, appointed Marc Tessier-Lavigne, PhD, Anthony B. Evnin, PhD, and Howard H. Pien to the Board of Directors, and named José Baselga, MD, PhD, Chairman of the Clinical Advisory Board. Tessier-Lavigne is President of Rockefeller University and, previously, EVP and Chief Scientific Officer at Genentech. Evnin is a Director of Acceleron Pharma, AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Infinity Pharmaceuticals and Constellation Pharmaceuticals. Pien is a Director on the Boards of ViroPharma, Vanda, ImmunoGen and Ikaria, and was the Chairman and CEO of Medarex. Baselga is Physician-in-Chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Mylan
Adele Gulfo was named as Executive Vice President, Global Collaboration and Strategic Operations at Mylan. Previously, Gulfo served as Regional President of Latin America in Pfizer’s Emerging Markets Business Unit. The Latin American business was the largest revenue generator within the Business Unit.
Naurex
Norbert G. Riedel, PhD, is the new President and CEO of Naurex, a biopharma company focused on diseases of the central nervous system. Riedel recently retired from Baxter International as Corporate Vice President and Chief Science and Innovation Officer.
Santaris
Santaris Pharma, a clinical-stage biopharma company focused on the discovery and development of RNA-targeted therapies, hired J.Donald deBethizy, PhD, as President and CEO. deBethizy is currently serving as executive chairman for Contera Pharma and as independent director for Asceneuron.
Sorrento
William S. Marth is now Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sorrento Therapeutics, a late-stage clinical oncology company. Marth was President and CEO of Teva–Americas until the end of 2012, where he played a key role in the acquisitions of Cephalon for $6.8 billion and Barr Pharmaceuticals for $7.4 billion. He is currently President and CEO of Albany Molecular Research.
