Oxford BioMedica (Oxford, UK) has named Paul Blake (right), a nonexecutive director of the company, to the position of chief development officer. He joined the board of Oxford BioMedica in January 2010 with 30 years experience in international pharma and biotech companies. He was most recently senior vice president and chief medical officer of Æterna Zentaris. He currently serves on the board of directors of Y-Prime, and formerly served as a director of Memory Pharmaceutical, Protez Pharmaceuticals and ViaCell.

John Dawson, CEO of Oxford BioMedica, says, “We are delighted that Paul has accepted the position of chief development officer and chosen to take an executive role within the company at this exciting time for Oxford BioMedica. His insight and guidance as a nonexecutive board member have been invaluable, and his extensive experience in the strategic clinical development of innovative therapies will be important to Oxford BioMedica as we continue to develop our broad pipeline of novel gene and cell therapies.”

Jeffrey Albers has been appointed CEO of Blueprint Medicines (Cambridge, MA, USA). He joins Blueprint from Algeta ASA, where he served on the executive management team as US president prior to the company's acquisition by Bayer.

Douglas L. Edgeton has been chosen as the next president and CEO of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (Research Triangle Park, NC, USA). He was most recently the center's senior vice president for financial planning and development.

Jeff Huber, a senior vice president at Google, has joined the board of directors of Illumina (San Diego). He joined Google in 2003 and at various times led development for the company's ads, applications and maps divisions. Prior to Google, Huber was vice president of architecture and systems development at eBay. In addition, Illumina announced the appointment of Tina S. Nova as senior vice president and general manager of the company's oncology business. Previously, Nova co-founded Genoptix and served as its president and CEO from 2000. Nova also co-founded Nanogen, where she was COO and president from 1994 to 2000. Rick Klausner, who had served as interim oncology leader at Illumina since January, will continue in his role as senior vice president and chief medical officer.

WuXi PharmaTech (Shanghai) has announced the appointment of Walter Teh-Ming Kwauk as an independent director to the board of directors and a member of the audit committee. Kwauk is currently a senior consultant at Motorola Solutions (China) Co. and serves as a director of Thunder Power Co., Sinosoft Technology Group, and China Fordoo Holdings. He was formerly a director of Alibaba.com.

Minerva Neurosciences (Cambridge, MA, USA) has named Mark S. Levine vice president and general counsel. Levine has over 17 years of experience as a corporate and commercial attorney. He previously served as assistant general counsel of athenahealth, Inc. and Clinical Data, Inc. and senior legal counsel of Wheelabrator Technologies.

Serenus Biotherapeutics (San Francisco and Johannesburg) have named Sbu Luthuli, former chairman of Cipla Medpro, Nigel Fleming, founder and former chairman of Athena Diagnostics and Kazuhiro Umeda, former president of JAIC Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand to its board of directors. The company also named Moosa Areff, most recently CEO of Ranbaxy South Africa's Sonke Pharmaceuticals subsidiary, as its COO, Andrew de Pão, former head of marketing of the prescription division at Cipla South Africa, as chief business officer, and Nahum Johnson, former business unit manager, state institutional and government at Cipla Medpro, as director, state and institutional business.

Bio-Rad Laboratories (Hercules, CA, USA) has named Joel McComb to its board of directors. McComb has 25 years of life sciences and diagnostics business experience, previously serving as vice president and general manager of Illumina's life sciences business unit and president of GE Healthcare's life sciences-discovery systems and interventional medicine divisions.

Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (La Jolla, CA, USA and Orlando, FL, USA) has announced the appointment of Perry Nisen as CEO and holder of the Donald Bren Chief Executive Chair. Nisen joins Sanford-Burnham from GlaxoSmithKline, where he was senior vice president of science and innovation.

Cortendo (Göteborg, Sweden) has announced the appointment of Matthew Pauls as president and CEO. He brings more than 20 years of experience in the pharma industry, most recently serving as chief commercial officer of Insmed. Prior to that, Pauls was senior vice president, head of global commercial operations at Shire Pharmaceuticals.

Niklas Prager has been appointed president and CEO of Medivir (Stockholm), succeeding Maris Hartmanis. Prager was elected to the board of Medivir in May. His previous positions include working for Merck both in the US and Sweden and serving as the CEO of Pfizer AB, Envirotainer and Qbtech.

Omni Bio Pharmaceutical (Fort Collins, CO, USA) announced the appointment of Jack Riccardi as CFO. Riccardi has more than 30 years of financial leadership experience. He was formerly CFO of ADial Pharmaceuticals and served most recently as CFO and partner at Green Street Ventures.

Theodore “Ted” Schroeder has been elected to the board of directors of Hyperion Therapeutics (Brisbane, CA, USA). Schroeder has over two decades of experience in the life sciences industry. Most recently, he was the founder of Cadence Pharmaceuticals, serving as its president and CEO from inception until its acquisition by Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals earlier this year.