Simcere Pharmaceutical Group (2096.HK), a China-based pharmaceutical company, announced on Monday that it has named Tamas Oravecz, PhD as its new senior vice president, chief scientific officer for Simcere US.

In the new role, Dr Oravecz will be responsible for providing strategic leadership to drug discovery efforts in America, building and managing preclinical drug development programs from concept and target validation through IND submission.

Oravecz has a 25-year track record of strategic leadership and management in developing a wide range of therapeutic modalities from small molecules and bio-therapeutic products to cell and gene therapy approaches. He has served as CSO for Parthenon Therapeutics, vice president, head of Cell Therapy Platform and Discovery at The Janssen Pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson, executive director of Biology and Pharmacology of Celgene, vice president of Immunology and Oncology of Lexicon Pharma, program head HIV Therapy for Novartis Cell and Gene Therapy, The National Institutes of Health/U.S. Food and Drug Administration; and The Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.