Novavax makes manufacturing promotions

US biotech company Novavax has made a brace of manufacturing management promotions.

It has appointed John Madsen as head of process and manufacturing operations and Steven Pincus as head of analytical and quality operations.

Both will report to Novavax chief executive Rahul Singhvi, who said: "John and Steve are uniquely well-qualified to manage our manufacturing process development, and quality organisations.

"Under their guidance and support, we have scaled up VLP vaccine manufacturing in large-scale stirred tank bioreactors, doubled our vaccine production capacity in our pilot manufacturing facility, substantially reduced manufacturing costs and advanced plans to commercialize our vaccine candidates."

Madsen joined Novavax in 2008 as director of bioprocess development with responsibility for development of Novavax's seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines for clinical testing.

Prior to joining Novavax, Madsen was director of manufacturing for the vaccine clinical materials programme at SAIC-Frederick, where he was responsible for clinical trials materials manufacturing, and director of pharmaceutical science at Entremed.

Meanwhile, Pincus joined Novavax in 2007 as director of analytical development with responsibility for product validation in support of preclinical and clinical studies.

Before joining Novavax Pincus was senior director of virology and animal biology at Elusys Therapeutics, where he helped develop monoclonal-based therapeutics to treat infectious diseases, and senior research scientist with Virogenetics.