Dr Dennis Langer : Dr Reddy’s Laboratories announced that Dr Dennis Langer has joined the company as president, North American operations. Dr Langer will be responsible for the management of the company’s North American operations and will be based at the company’s offices in New Jersey.

A native of New York, Dr Langer has a JD (cum laude) from Harvard Law School, an MD from Georgetown University School of Medicine, and a BA in biology from Columbia University.

Dr Langer joins Dr Reddy’s from GlaxoSmithkline, where he held various management positions since 1994. Most recently, he served as senior vice president, Project and Portfolio Management, Research and Development. In this position, he was responsible for worldwide project and portfolio management activities for all research and development assets, for all therapeutic areas.

In addition, he was also leading the alliance and joint venture management function. Prior to that, Dr Langer held a variety of management positions involving increasingly responsibility in the areas of global product development strategy, healthcare services and business strategy with GlaxoSmithkline. He has also served as the CEO of Neose Pharmaceuticals and held various positions at GD Searle, Abbott and Eli Lilly. Dr Langer was also chief resident in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and held clinical fellowships in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and George Washington University School of Medicine.

Dara B Patel : has taken over charge as Secretary-General of Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association (IDMA) from September 1, 2002. He has earlier worked with Pharma majors such as Wockhardt and Parke-Davis.

Dr. Rashmi Barbhaiya : former vice president and worldwide Head of the Department of Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics in the Division of Discovery and Early Development, at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, USA has taken charge as the head of Research & Development, at Ranbaxy with effect from August 1, 2002.

Dr. Barbhaiya has over 25 years of corporate and academic experience covering a broad spectrum of pharmaceutical sciences. During his tenure at BMS, he played a key role in introducing 'developability' as a key criterion for selecting drug candidates for development which contributed significantly in making BMS an industry leader in rapid IND filings. He was instrumental in formalising strategies for life cycle management of a number of marketed products, the more recent one, the introduction of once a day formulation and a combination product of metformin. Dr. Barbhaiya has also successfully led a number of projects through NDAs some of which have become important drugs for BMS.

A doctorate in clinical pharmacology from the University of London, UK, he has been conferred with prestigious awards like the AAPS Fellow award from the American Association of Pharmacological Scientists 1993, the Ranbaxy award for excellence in Pharmaceutical Research, Ranbaxy Foundation, India 1993, and Meritorious Manuscript Award from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, 1998.

Dr. Uday Saxena : former president and CEO of Reddy US Therapeutics Inc. (Reddy US), a biopharmaceutical company and subsidiary of Dr. Reddy's based in Atlanta, US, has been appointed as the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories. He is to oversee global R&D activities of Dr.Reddy's.

Dr. Saxena joined Dr. Reddy's in early 2000 as the head of Reddy US. He has been instrumental in building a top-notch team of scientists and in setting up a discovery programme focussed on novel therapeutics that address unmet medical needs in diabetes, inflammation and cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Saxena has been in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry for over a decade. Prior to joining Dr. Reddy's, he held several key positions at AtheroGenics, Inc., a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company located in Alpharetta, Georgia and Parke-Davis Research Division, Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has been an invited as speaker at several national and international meetings and is currently on the editorial board of two drug discovery related Journals and routinely reviews articles for research journals. He is an elected fellow of the Council on Arteriosclerosis, American Heart Association since 1991. He has over 45 full publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is also an inventor and has to his credit several patents related to cardiovascular disease and inflammation. He received his PhD from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada and was a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University in New York.