New appointments boost BioDiem team

Melbourne drug discovery company BioDiem has appointed two new executives as it gears up for a public listing.

Former Biota chief financial officer and company secretary Richard Wadley has taken the same roles at BioDiem.

And Dr Errol Malta, formerly a product development leader at US biotech giant Amgen, has been appointed BioDiem's new assistant director, product development.

BioDiem develops and commercialises projects from the Institute of Experimental Medicine in St Petersburg. The company's key product, a live attenuated influenza vaccine which is delivered by nasal spray, has been out-licensed to Merck.

In a statement, BioDiem CEO Tom Williams described Wadley as one of the most experienced and well-respected financial managers in the Australian biotech industry. "This appointment adds to the expertise that we have assembled and enables us to move to the next phase of development, where we will leverage our extensive scientific and commercial links in Australia, Russia, Europe and the United States to form new alliances and build additional value for the company," he said.

He said Dr Malta had more than 13 years' postdoc experience in pharmacology and extensive international experience in biotechnology therapeutic drug development, serving stints in the US, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia. He has been a senior lecturer at the Victorian College of Pharmacology and was a research fellow at the Department of Medicine at Flinders University.

"Dr Malta brings a wealth of experience in biotechnology and therapeutic drug development to BioDiem," Williams said. "This will be very valuable to us as we develop our next raft of projects, which include a compound aimed at assisting post heart attack recovery and an antimicrobial compound, and as we accelerate these projects towards clinical trials."