UK coding and marking solutions company Markem has made three additions to its technical support team. Terence Howard has been appointed as helpdesk engineer, while Ivor Milne and Mark Lindley join the Markem team as customer service engineers.
Penwest Pharmaceuticals has appointed Fred Banti as vice president of corporate development, responsible for developing and out-licensing Penwest's product portfolio and overseeing its business development operations and marketing functions. He has held marketing and business development positions at several major pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, Pharmacia and Rhone-Poulenc Rorer.
Argenta Discovery has appointed David Gee as chief commercial officer, responsible for continuing to drive the company's global commercial activities. He joins the company from Danish biotechnology company Pharmexa, where he was director of licensing.
French company Entomed, which discovers and develops novel medicines derived from the biology and chemical diversity of insects, has appointed Dr Jean Combalbert as ceo and a member of the company's board of directors. He replaces Simon Cartmell, acting ceo, who remains as chairman of the board of directors. Combalbert joins Entomed from French biotechnology company Proteus, where he was director, pharmaceutical business unit.
Codexis has made two senior appointments. Tassos Gianakakos has been promoted to vice president of finance and corporate development, having been with the company since its inception. Meanwhile, Dr Arnold Demain becomes a member of the company's industrial advisory board. He will advise Codexis in developing novel and dramatically more efficient fermentation-based processes for natural product-based APIs using its proprietary MolecularBreeding and Whole Genome Shuffling technologies.
UK-based Xcellsyz, which focuses on the discovery of new drugs for diabetes and obesity through the use of novel cell-based technologies, has appointed Brad Hoy as ceo. He was formerly senior director of Geron Corporation's Edinburgh-based subsidiary Geron BioMed, and prior to that was chief financial officer at Cyclacel.
Professor Peter Shepherd, a founder of the company and previously acting chief executive officer, is to concentrate on his role as chief scientific officer.