The government of Pondicherry has appointed a new Controlling Authority for the territory's Drugs Control Administration (DCA). The Department of Health has notified P Rajkumar's appointment as controlling authority last week.

This is the first time the territory's government has appointed an official from the pharmacy field as the head of the department. Till 1989, doctors from medical services were handling the post. After 1989, the post was lying vacant. Now after 21 years, the department has a drug controller.

For more than one year, Rajkumar was acting as the state licensing authority. Now, as the Union territory's drugs controller, he got the statutory powers for controlling the entire department. However, he has to report the official matters to the director of medical services instead of the health secretary as he holds additional charge of licensing authority too.

Stempeutics Research Private Limited, a group company of Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) and a leading stem cell company developing stem cell-based medicinal products in India, has promoted Mr BN Manohar, formerly President as the Chief Executive Officer of the company.

Manohar joined MEMG in 2002 as Chief Executive Officer of Manipal Infocom, a BPO Organization of MEMG. He made a significant contribution to the migration of the call center business into Manipal – Omega Healthcare BPO JV.

A engineering graduate from Regional Engineering College, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, in 1977 and a ME graduate from Guindy Engineering College, University of Madras, India, in 1979, Mr Manohar went on to enter the Indian Government Services. He served in Overseas Communication Services and Defense R&D organization for four years.

Avesthagen, India's knowledge-based life sciences company has appointed Mr Jacques Vincent as a member of the company's Board of Directors. Mr Vincent joins the Board in his personal capacity as a distinguished personality of the food and science industry.

Mr Vincent is on the board of Syngenta- a multinational seed and crop-protection company in Switzerland, Biophytis- a biotech start-up and Mediaperformance- a media company in France.

He began his career with Danone in 1970 and has since held various financial and overall management positions within this group. Mr Vincent is a graduate engineer of the Ecole Centrale, Paris, holds a bachelor in Economics from Paris University and a Master of Science from Stanford University.

Amneal Pharmaceuticals has announced that Dr. Shankar Hariharan has joined the company as Chief Scientific Officer/Executive Vice President of Specialty Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Hariharan was previously Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of Par Pharmaceutical Companies, Inc. in Woodcliff Lake, NJ, a producer of both branded and generic drugs, where he directed a staff of over 240 and a budget exceeding $70 million. He created a Brand Product Development/New Drug Application (NDA) Division and obtained Par's first NDA approval. Dr. Hariharan identified products for internal development or in licensing for the company's branded and generic portfolios. He successfully built internal expertise in Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs) for generics and redirected the product selection strategy to value-added offerings such as sustained release and modified release drugs.

In the past 18 months Amneal has significantly expanded its R&D capabilities in number of products, variety of dosage forms, range of therapeutic categories, product complexity and diversity. The firm's newest R&D Centre in Ahmadabad, Gujarat, India, a 75,000 square foot facility completed in late 2008, joins its U.S. R&D sites in Brookhaven, NY (R&D "headquarters") and Branchburg, NJ (under expansion).

Most recently Dr. Hariharan was President, CEO and Co-Founder of DermAct Pharmaceutical, Inc., Melville, NY and Action Medicines of Spain, companies dedicated to developing and commercializing products for dermatology applications. He has also held senior executive and R&D management positions with Forest Laboratories, Inc., Inwood, NY and IDR Laboratory and Clinic, Ltd. in Rockville, MD.

Dr. Hariharan received his Ph.D. from Northeastern University's School of Pharmacy and Masters and Bachelor of Pharmacy degrees from Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, American College of Clinical Pharmacology, American Society for Microbiology and the Indian Pharmaceutical Society.

Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC, headquartered in Hauppauge, NY is a U.S.-based firm that develops, manufactures and distributes generic pharmaceuticals regulated and approved by the U.S. FDA.

Mr Devashish Ohri has been appointed as the Managing Director for South Asia with Invitrogen, part of Life Technologies. He has over 20 years of experience across different sectors.

Mr Ohri graduated in history from St Stephen's College in New Delhi, India, and did his MBA from INSEAD in France. Prior to joining Life Technologies, Devashish was the Sales leader for Eli Lilly India, focusing on Diabetes Care and Institution Business.

$25,000 Grant Awarded at ASMS 2010 Recognizes Innovative Mass Spectrometry Research and Applications

Waters Corporation presented Prof. Sarah Trimpin of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan with the ASMS 2010 Waters Research Award, an award presented annually that recognizes scientific achievement in mass spectrometry. The award presentation took place at the Salt Palace Convention Center during 58th annual meeting of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS).

In presenting the award to Dr. Trimpin, Waters’ Lance Nicolaysen, Ph.D. said, “By employing mass spectrometry in new ways, Dr. Trimpin has enhanced the potential of mass spectrometry as a tool for disease research. Thanks to her efforts, and the efforts of previous award winners, we’re getting closer to the day when curing diseases like Alzheimers and others is possible.”

An independent panel of mass spectrometry scientists and experts selects recipients of the Waters Research Award. The year 2010 marks 24 consecutive years of Waters award sponsorship.

Dr. Trimpin joined Wayne State University in 2008 as an Assistant Professor in Analytical Chemistry. Her list of accomplishments includes authoring many research articles, books, book chapters, review and perspective articles, as well as invited lectures. She has chaired sessions on new developments in ionization, imaging by mass spectrometry, and polymer analysis by MS at previous ASMS conferences. She was a 2006 Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) Young Investigator Awardee and in 2007 she was named the Top Young Investigator by Genome Technology Magazine highlighting "the best and brightest people who are poised to make serious contributions to their areas of interest." More recently she received the National Science Foundation CAREER AWARD and the DuPont Young Investigator Award.

The focus of Professor Trimpin’s fundamental mass spectrometry research is on tissue imaging by high-sensitivity matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry. Her discoveries have led to new approaches to imaging tissues, not only for lipids and metabolites, but for higher-mass compounds including proteins and maybe even protein complexes, or aggregates of proteins.

Following Waters introduction of the Synapt G2 HDMS Mass Spectrometer at ASMS 2009, Waters installed it’s first Synapt G2 in the United States in Dr. Trimpin’s lab at Wayne State University in December. The mass spectrometer is the first quadrupole time-of-flight instrument to perform ion mobility experiments to separate molecules by their mass, charge, size, and shape and quantify them over a wide range of concentrations. Dr. Trimpin plans to use the instrument’s MALDI and ion mobility capability for novel research in different fields of inquiry.