AstraZeneca and Pfizer

Martin Mackay, Ph.D. has been named president of R&D at AstraZeneca. He will lead the company’s R&D organization and will have overall accountability for new products — both small molecules and biologics — from AZ’s pipeline. He will start his new role on July 1, 2010 and will be based at the company’s headquarters in London.

Dr. Mackay joined AstraZeneca from Pfizer, where he served as president, PharmaTherapeutics R&D, and was a member of the Pfizer Executive Leadership Team. Prior to joining Pfizer in 1995, he held several discovery and development roles culminating with his appointment as head of Molecular and Cell Biology, CNS Research at Ciba-Geigy. At AZ, he will report to chief executive officer David Brennan and will be a member of the Senior Executive Team.

Over at Pfizer, Mikael Dolsten, M.D., Ph.D. was named president of Pfizer Worldwide R&D. He previously served as president, BioTherapeutics R&D, and the company will now integrate that unit with PharmaTherapeutics. Before that, Dr. Dolsten led Wyeth’s R&D efforts, and had prior R&D experience at Boehringer Ingelheim and AstraZeneca. Dr. Dolsten will now lead all of research at Pfizer, as well as development of all compounds through Phase II. Late-stage clinical development will continue to be led by clinical teams throughout the Worldwide Biopharmaceutical Businesses, a structure that went into effect in April 2009.

“Since closing the Wyeth acquisition we have rapidly advanced integration, completing the pipeline portfolio review, finalizing decisions regarding our R&D network very quickly after close, and steadily progressing the pipeline. Rapid integration has been enhanced by strong and steady collaboration between the two legacy R&D groups — making the consolidation under one leader a natural and progressive step to take at this point,” said Jeffrey Kindler, Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive officer.