The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has chosen Ellen Feigal, a biotechnology executive and drug development expert, as its second-in-command.

CIRM president Alan Trounson said the agency is to looking to Feigal to help it make good on its promise to translate basic science into treatments. “The primary aim is really to draw on her expertise in translational and clinical medicine, because that’s a pretty important part of our portfolio now,” Trounson said.

Generating a tangible product is becoming ever more crucial for CIRM as the clock runs down on the ten-year lifespan of the agency, which was voted into existence in 2004.

Feigal is currently Executive Medical Director for Global Development at Amgen, Inc., the world’s largest biotechnology company, based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. She has also worked at the U.S. National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and directs the American Course on Drug Development and Regulatory Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, according to a CIRM press release.

Feigal’s is CIRM’s first Vice President for Research and Development. The position was created after the departure of CIRM’s second chief scientific officer, Marie Csete, who resigned in 2009. Csete said at the time that she felt her clinical expertise was “not respected” by the agency’s leadership.

CIRM’s leadership is still in flux after an attempt to seat a new chair failed in December. The agency continues to look for a new chair and will take up that matter and others at board meetings next week.