Senior appointments at Sanofi, Shire and Targacept; Global Fund names new executive director, fires inspector general

French drug major Sanofi (Euronext: SA) has appointed Gary Nabel, as senior vice president, chief scientific officer and deputy to the president for Global R&D, Elias Zerhouni effective December 3, 2012. He will join the group’s Global Leadership Team and will be based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Dr Nabel joins Sanofi from the National Institutes of Health, where he served as director of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1999. In his new position, Dr Nabel will be responsible for assessing and coordinating Sanofi’s scientific direction for biopharmaceuticals, vaccines and animal health with a focus on improving translational approaches across Sanofi. In his role, he will lead the evaluation of scientific quality of projects and programs across all of R&D, and participate in setting Sanofi’s overall strategy