Christopher Bernard out, Chris Emery in at Curetis USA

Molecular diagnostic solutions developer Curetis announced on Tuesday that Christopher Bernard has informed the company of his resignation as president and chief executive officer of Curetis USA, and as a member of the Curetis management board, effective 31 August.

The German company said it accepted Bernard's resignation, and appointed Chris Emery as president and CEO of Curetis USA, effective 1 September.

Bernard had joined Curetis USA as president and CEO on 1 July 2016, and had served on the management board of Curetis since his appointment at the annual general meeting in June 2018.

“Chris Bernard has been a highly valued member of the senior management team,” said supervisory board chairman William Rhodes.

“On behalf of the supervisory board, I would like to thank Chris for building the US subsidiary from the ground up, making excellent use of his broad and deep network in the US diagnostics industry.

“We understand also his resignation from the management board of Curetis to pursue another opportunity, and we wish him luck in the future.”

Curetis said the newly-appointed president and CEO of Curetis USA, Chris Emery, was bringing more than 20 years of relevant commercial experience in the diagnostics and pharmaceutical industries.

His primary focus had been leading the commercial launch and execution for numerous next-generation molecular diagnostic tests in the precision medicine market.

Most recently, he was the chief commercial officer of North America for Menarini Silicon Biosystems, where he directed the US sales and business development activities for the ‘DEPArray NxT’ molecular device, as well as the integration of the FDA-cleared ‘CellSearch’ circulating tumour cell test.

Prior to that , he was the general manager for Abbott's ‘PersonalizeDx’ cancer diagnostics laboratory division, and he also held senior level management roles as chief operating officer at CombiMatrix, vice-president of sales and marketing at Response Genetics, and national sales and marketing manager at US LABS, prior to its acquisition by LabCorp.

He began his career in healthcare with Johnson & Johnson, promoting the antibiotic Levaquin (levofloxacin) into hospital systems for a variety of bacterial infections, including hospital-acquired pneumonia.

Emery obtained his MBA from Pepperdine University, and his BA in Communications from the University of California, San Diego.

“We are very pleased that in Chris Emery we have found a great successor for the strategically important role of president and CEO of Curetis USA,” said Curetis CEO Oliver Schacht.

“With his extensive experience in the diagnostics market, Chris is very well positioned to seamlessly continue driving the commercial roll-out of Unyvero LRT in the US where he finds a strong team in place and a very solid funnel of qualified accounts with some exciting near-term opportunities for commercial conversions.”