Novocell Hires John West as CEO

Novocell, the San Diego-based developer of stem cell therapies for diabetes, said it has named John West as president, CEO , and a member of its board. West was previously CEO of Solexa, a maker of genome sequencing machines that was sold to San Diego-based Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]) in 2007 for more than $600 million.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.