Cordis Corp. tapped the lead investigator in clinical trials of its Cypher drug-eluting stent, Dr. Christian Spaulding, to be its worldwide vice president of medical affairs.

The Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary said Spaulding will lead its global clinical strategy starting June 1 from his home base in Paris.

Spaulding is director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at the City of Light’s Cochin Hospital and professor of medicine at René Descartes University, according to a press release. He was the principal investigator in the Typhoon trial comparing the sirolimus-eluting Cypher to bare-metal stents for for treating acute myocardial infarctions (heart attacks).

Dr. Christian Spaulding

Spaulding also led the RES Elution trial comparing Cordis’s next-generation cobalt-chromium, reservoir-base, bioresorbable Conor stent with Boston Scientific Corp.’s (NYSE:BSX) Taxus Liberté paclitaxel-eluting stent. Cordis acquired Conor MedSystems for about $1.4 billion in 2006.

Cordis chief scientific officer Dr. Campbell Rogers told MassDevice last year that the company is placing a “big focus” on the Conor stent, which Cordis is now calling the Nevo.

“It’s a real departure, because it uses technology that … doesn’t coat the surface of the stent but rather fills reservoirs within the body of the stent with polymer and drug. It overcomes a large number of challenges with all of the current surface-coated drug-eluting stents, in terms of both acute success and also, we believe likely, in terms of long-term safety,” Rogers told us.