Head of partnering quits at Roche

Switzerland-based Roche (ROG: SIX), which describes itself as the world’s largest biotech firm, today announced that Sophie Kornowski-Bonnet (pictured above), head of Roche Partnering and member of the enlarged corporate executive committee (CEC) since 2012, has accepted a new opportunity and will be leaving the company effective July 31, 2018.

James Sabry, currently head of Partnering for Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED), has been appointed global head of Partnering, a role that combines the partnering functions across the Roche pharmaceuticals business, and will become a member of the enlarged CEC. He will be based in Basel and assume his new role on August 1, 2018.

Roche's chief executive Dr Severin Schwan said: "I am pleased to appoint James Sabry as global head of Partnering. James brings a wealth of medical, scientific and business development expertise to successfully identify the best external innovation opportunities and bring them into the Roche Group."

Prior to joining Genentech in his current role in 2010, Dr Sabry was CEO of a start-up biotech company and was founder and CEO of Cytokinetics, a biopharmaceutical company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is an American citizen and completed his MD at Queen's University in Canada and then did his medical residency in Neurology at Harvard Medical School before further attaining a PhD in Neuroscience from University of California, San Francisco. He continued his research work as a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford Medical School in the Department of Biochemistry.