• Celso Bianco, MD, has been named executive vice president of America's Blood Centers (ABC; Washington), a new position created to fill the demand for scientific, medical and technical expertise within the organization. Bianco is the first medical doctor to hold a senior staff position at ABC. He will assist the organization in shaping its services in blood banking and transfusion medicine and will have direct oversight of ABC's science and business initiatives. Bianco currently is vice president for medical affairs at the New York Blood Center and formerly was an assistant professor at New York University School of Medicine and at Rockefeller University, and former professor of pathology at the State University of New York-Brooklyn. America's Blood Centers is a national network of nonprofit, independent community blood centers that provide about 47% of the U.S. blood supply.
  • Alain Massot has been named vice president of international marketing and sales for Biopure (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Previously, Massot held several senior management positions at Millipore, including corporate vice president of marketing, vice president of worldwide business operations, president of the analytical division and president of Milligen-Biosearch, a biotechnology division of Millipore. Biopure develops oxygen therapeutic drugs that are intravenously administered into the circulatory system.
  • Dale Clendon has joined HemoSense (Milpitas, California) as vice president of sales and marketing. Prior to joining HemoSense, he was vice president of sales and marketing for Medasonics. HemoSense makes products for monitoring blood coagulation at the point of care, including self-testing.
  • Edward Siemens has been named chief operating officer of Lifestream Technologies (Post Falls, Idaho), developer of a cholesterol self-testing monitor with embedded Smart Card reader. Siemens previously served as president of Omron Healthcare.
  • William Steere Jr., chairman of the board and CEO of Pfizer (New York), announced that he will retire from the CEO position at the end of the year but retain his position as chairman of the board until the annual shareholder meeting in April 2001. Dr. Henry McKinnell, president and chief operating officer, will become CEO on Jan. 1, 2001, and will be elected chairman of the board following next year's annual meeting.
  • Sharon Sweet has joined Spectranetics (Colorado Springs, Colorado) as vice president, corporate relations. Sweet has nearly 20 years of corporate communications experience with the Dii Group, Johns Manville, Premark and Borg-Warner. Spectranetics develops excimer laser technologies for interventional cardiovascular therapy.