• AGA Medical Holdings (Plymouth, Minnesota) reported a transition of responsibilities in its senior management team. Franck Gougeon has decided to leave his role as president/CEO, but will remain a member of the AGA's board and will chair the newly formed corporate development committee. Gougeon co-founded AGA in 1995. He was named president/CEO in July 2005. John Barr, who has been COO of AGA since 2005, has been named president/CEO. AGA Medical makes interventional devices to treat structural heart defects.

• Mark Smedley, global head of operations at Invitrogen (Carlsbad, California), has been named to lead the integration team for the combination of Invitrogen and Applera's Applied Biosystems Group. Prior to joining Invitrogen, Smedley was with Novartis, where he participated in and led several global multi-business, multi-billion-dollar integrations. Invitrogen's R&D efforts are focused on innovation in all major areas of biological discovery including functional genomics, proteomics, stem cells, cell therapy and cell biology.

• Quintiles Transnational (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) has named Millie Tan senior VP of global marketing and chief marketing officer and David Coman senior VP of communications and patient recruitment. Tan joins Quintiles from Monster Worldwide's European division, while Coman previously was VP of global marketing for Dendrite. Quintiles Transnational provides services in drug development, financial partnering and commercialization for the biotechnology and healthcare industries.

• Louis Ruggiero was named senior VP of North America for Stereotaxis (St. Louis). Ruggiero most recently was chief sales & marketing officer at DJ Orthopedics. Stereotaxis makes advanced cardiology instrument control systems for use in a hospital's interventional surgical suite to enhance the treatment of coronary artery disease and arrhythmias.

• Xtent (Menlo Park, California) said that Christopher Smith and Arthur Taylor have been named to the company's board of directors. Smith is president of Cochlear Americas; Taylor was a senior executive at Medtronic's business from November 2007-May 2008. Xtent makes DES systems for the treatment of coronary artery disease.