Andreas Busch, Ph.D., has been appointed executive vice president, head of R&D and chief scientific officer at Shire plc. Dr. Bush will become a member of the company’s executive committee beginning in January. Howard Mayer, MD, currently serving as head of R&D on an interim basis, has been appointed chief medical officer.

“Andy is an outstanding scientist with extensive experience leading research and development functions, and an established track record of building broad portfolios that encompass both biologics and small molecules,” said Flemming Ornskov, MD, MPH, chief executive officer, Shire. “We look forward to Andy enabling us to further accelerate our ability to discover novel treatments for our innovative rare disease pipeline.”

Dr. Busch currently serves as head of Drug Discovery and a member of the Executive Committee for the Pharmaceuticals division of Bayer, where he leads a team of approximately 3,300 researchers. During his 13 years at Bayer, he has held roles of increasing responsibility, including senior vice president, head discovery Europe at Bayer HealthCare and executive vice president, Global Head Drug Discovery. Dr. Busch was responsible for the Schering drug discovery integration, the overall R&D strategy and enforced the improvement of Bayer’s research productivity. Prior to joining Bayer, Dr. Busch was global head of Cardiovascular Research at Hoechst and Sanofi-Aventis.

Previously, Dr. Mayer served as senior vice president and head of Global Clinical Development. Dr. Mayer joined Shire in 2012 and has been responsible for global clinical development across immunology, hereditary angioedema, hematology, lysosomal storage disorders, gastrointestinal / internal medicine / endocrine, ophthalmics, a growing franchise in oncology, and neuroscience. Prior to joining Shire, he served as chief medical officer at EMD Serono, a division of Merck KGaA.

Dr. Ornskov continued, “Howard is an established leader at Shire and in the industry, with extensive clinical development and regulatory experience across a variety of therapeutic areas.  He has been an integral component to building and advancing Shire’s pipeline with nearly 40 programs in the clinic, including 17 in later stages of development.  I am confident he will thrive in his new role, as we continue to seek to deliver novel rare disease treatments to patients in need.”