Wednesday, October 1, 2008

John Schmidt made Alnylam chief scientific officer

By Mass High Tech Staff

RNAi-focused Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. has hired John Schmidt to fill the position of chief scientific officer, company officials announced. Alnylam’s CEO John Maraganore formerly held both positions.

Schmidt comes from Sanofi-Aventis SA (NYSE: SNY) where he served as the French-based pharmaceutical company’s vice president of global discovery and worked on initiatives collaborating with Chinese researchers on drug discovery. Prior to that, he was vice president and head of Sanofi-Aventis’ respiratory and rheumatoid arthritis disease group. Schmidt was also Merck Research Laboratories’ director of immunology and rheumatology.

Alnylam (Nasdaq: ALNY) also promoted Victor Kotelianski, making him the company’s senior vice president and an Alnylam distinguished fellow. Prior to joining Alnylam in 2003, Kotelianski was a distinguished investigator and director of biological research at Biogen since 1994.

Cambridge-based Alnylam also promoted three other members to its executive team. Antonin de Fougerolles, was made vice president of research, immunology, metabolic and viral disease. Prior to joining Alnylam in 2003 de Fougerolles served as a principal scientist at Biogen Idec Inc. (Nasdaq:BIIB) since 1998. Susanna High was promoted to vice president of business planning and program management. High came to Alnylam from Millennium Pharmaceuticals: The Takeda Oncology Company in February 2007, serving as senior director, business planning and program management. At Millennium she was most recently the director of corporate strategy. And Dinah Sah was named to the position of vice president of research, CNS and oncology. Sah joined Alnylam in April of 2005 as senior director of research. She also came from Biogen Idec, as the firm’s associate director of research.