Contract biomanufacturer Althea Technologies has made a new senior management appointment for its BioServices unit as it continues to expand its capacity and capabilities, in particular in its commercial manufacturing operations.

Karen Daniels has joined the Californian company as president of the division and her appointment will allow the firm's chief operations officer Rick Hancock to focus on new commercial businesses, Althea said.

Daniels previously held executive positions at Genetronics, Plexus Corporation and TDK before her most recent post at Vidacare Corporation, a medical device company offering vascular access solutions for emergency medicine.

Another US-based contract manufacturer, Hyaluron, has recently expanded its Quality Assurance team by appointing Robert Haggerty as vice president of Quality.

Haggerty will be responsible for overseeing quality and regulatory compliance at the company's Burlington, Massachusetts facility.

Most recently, he was the director of Quality Assurance at Alexion Pharmaceuticals where he was responsible for all quality assurance start-up activities, and prior to that Haggerty held positions in QA at Ben Venue, DuPont, Merck, and Shire (formerly Transkaryotic Therapies).

Hyaluron specialises in aseptic manufacturing of filled liquid parenterals and earlier this year announced the addition of lyophilization services to its offering.

Chinese contract research organisation (CRO) WuXi PharmaTech last week announced that Liljie Fu has taken over as vice president for the company and head of operations at SuZhou Pharmatech.

In his new role, Fu will play a key role in establishing and developing a good laboratory practice (GLP) complaint drug safety testing and evaluation facility in Suzhou. Fu previously held the position of vice president of global integration for Bridge Pharmaceuticals, and was also the founder and CEO of Next Century, a contract research outsourcing firm.

Meanwhile, Canadian firm Draxis Health has made changes in its management structure in a bid to "streamline the leadership of its organisation and better reflect the core operating businesses in Montreal".

Jean-Pierre Robert was named president of Draxis Specialty Pharmaceuticals (DSP), the company's subsidiary that provides sterile, non-sterile and radiopharmaceutical products.

In addition, the company has established an Office of the President which will include Dr Martin Barkin, president and CEO of Draxis Health and Dan Brazier, chief operating officer. Within the Office of the President, Barkin and Brazier will keep their current responsibilities.

Meanwhile, John Durham, currently president of Draxis Pharma, left the company on 20 July to "pursue other interests".

In the clinical outsourcing arena, US firm Hill Top Research has named Tim Burke executive director of clinical operations.

Burke will be in charge of the development of multi-centre clinical trial management and clinical monitoring services, as well as managing the day-to-day clinical operations activities.

Prior to his new position, Burke was senior project director at Kendle.

On the other side of the Atlantic, UK-based CRO Premier Research Group has appointed David Fitts as executive director of biostatistics.

Fitts was previously vice president of the clinical R&D unit's global statistics at EMD Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of German drug maker Merck KGaA. In his new role, Fitts will be responsible for all of Premier biostatistics operations in the US.

And finally, Holmes Biopharma has announced the appointment of Mark Slama as associate director of clinical operations for the company's CRO subsidiary, Qualia Clinical Services.

Slama joined Holmes Biopharma from MDS Pharma Services where he held several clinical management positions.