Biopharma has announced the appointment of Siddharth J Advant, PhD, as president of its biopharmaceutical services.

Chairman Anurag Bagaria said: "Dr Advant exemplifies Kemwell’s commitment to delivering high performance to its customers."

"His extensive experience in CMC development and commercialisation will help Kemwell grow its contract biotech business."

As a member of Kemwell’s committee for strategic growth, Dr Advant will lead a team of professionals, to develop and deliver high-quality services in an efficient manner to biopharmaceutical companies globally.

Over the course of his 20-year career, Dr Advant held various leadership positions.

He is joining Kemwell from ImClone Systems where he was associate vice-president, CMC project management.

Prior to ImClone, Dr Advant was head of Tunnell Consulting’s west coast office.

Before Tunnell, he was director for Diosynth Biotechnology, where he was involved in three primary areas.

These included project management and business alliances, technology transfer and clinical operations, and pharmaceutical sciences and stability.

Dr Advant was responsible for technical and financial execution of customer projects, development and implementation of technology transfer programs, as well as building and managing an analytical, formulation and cGMP testing laboratory.

He worked as a scientist in the pharmaceutical development division at Protein Design Labs and as a program manager for BioReliance, where he supervised a cGMP / GLP compliant formulation development business.

Dr Advant earned a BS degree in Pharmacy from the University of Poona, India and a PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy.

Additionally, he is a founding member of the CMC Strategy Forum Advisory Committee, which consists of FDA and industry members.

Dr Advant also served as chairman for the 2008 WCBP Meeting, 2004, AAPS National Biotechnology Conference in Boston and the 2002 AAPS Biotechnology Section.

The author of various peer-reviewed articles, Dr Advant also made a number of scientific presentations at major industry conferences.