• Jonathan Atzen was named senior vice president and general counsel ofAdvanced Cell Technology(Worcester, Massachusetts). Since 2003, Atzen has been an attorney at Heller Ehrman/Venture Law Group. Advanced Cell Technology, a subsidiary of A.C.T. Holdings, is applying stem cell technology in the emerging field of regenerative medicine.

• Denise Fletcher has stepped down as senior vice president and CFO of DaVita (El Segundo, California). Executive Vice President Tom Kelly will assume the role of acting CFO. The company said a search for a new CFO would begin immediately. DaVita is a provider of dialysis services for patients suffering from chronic kidney failure.

• Timothy Nelson will serve as the new president and CEO of MAP Pharmaceuticals (Mountain View, California), a developer of inhaled drug products. Nelson also will join the company’s board. Thomas Armer, PhD, who has served as president and chief scientific officer since MAP’s founding, will continue to serve in the latter role. Prior to joining MAP Pharmaceuticals, Nelson served as senior vice president, commercial and business development at Durect.

• James Thrall, MD, was elected chairman of the board of Mobile Aspects (Pittsburgh), a provider of radio frequency identification tracking solutions for the healthcare industry. Thrall, a member of Mobile Aspects’ board of directors since 2002, has been radiologist-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital since 1988. He also holds the Juan Taveras Professorship of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and serves on the executive committee of the Harvard Department of Radiology.

• John Giddings has been appointed CEO of Oakfield Instruments (Morrisville, North Carolina), an esophageal and urology diagnostic equipment provider. Giddings was formerly the sales and marketing director of Oakfield Instruments and has held several senior positions within the organization. He has extensive experience in the healthcare industry and previously worked for Baxter Healthcare and Smith & Nephew in the UK.

• Recom Managed Systems (Los Angeles) named Pamela Bunes CEO and president. Bunes was named to Recom’s board of directors last month. She also was acting as a consultant to the company. Dr. Lowell Harmison, former principal deputy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will continue in his roles as a consultant and a director of the company and will assist Bunes as Recom’s co-CEO throughout the period of transition. Bunes most recently was employed by Biosense Webster, a Johnson & Johnson (J&J) subsidiary. Recom also reported that its board of directors has secured a five-year employment commitment from Rodney Hildebrandt, Recom’s chief operating officer, secretary and board member. Terms have not been disclosed. Hildebrandt was a founding executive of Ethicon Endo-Surgery, also a unit of J&J subsidiary. Most recently, he served as that company’s director of corporate communications. Recom Managed Systems is an emerging life sciences company focused on the monitoring and detection of disease through continuous biomedical signal monitoring.

• Peter Leveton has joined Zynex Medical Holdings (Littleton, Colorado) as CFO, a newly created position. Leveton comes to Zynex most recently from Integrated Financial Systems, where he served as vice president, sales and marketing. Zynex provides therapeutic devices for patients with functional disability.