Cardiome Pharma Corp. announced changes to the company's senior management team. William Hunter, M.D., previously interim Chief Executive Officer and Director, has been appointed full time President and Chief Executive Officer; Karim Lalji has been promoted from Senior Vice President of Commercial Affairs to Chief Commercial Officer; and Sheila Grant has been hired as Chief Operating Officer.

Prior to Cardiome, Dr. Hunter co-founded Angiotech Pharmaceuticals in 1992 and assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer in 1997 when Angiotech was a venture-stage, private, pre-clinical company with less than 50 employees. Mr. Karim Lalji has served as Cardiome's SVP Commercial Affairs since 2007. As Chief Commerciial Officer, he will be responsible for overseeing the commercialisation off BRINAVESSTM in Europe and other markets worldwide amongst other commercial and corporate business development related activities.

Prior to Cardiome, Mr. Lalji was previously Vice President of Business Strategy and New Product Commercialization at Sepracor Inc. Ms. Sheila Grant was most recently Cardiome's VP of Product Development, with responsibility for the overall management of the vernakalant IV and oral progrrams. She has overseen the development of veernakalant from its initial pre-clinical studies through to commercialization. Prior to joining Cardiome, Ms. Grant acted as business consultant to De Novo Enzyme Corporation and Coopers & Lybrand.