Roche announced that Sophie Kornowski-Bonnet, head of Roche Partnering and member of the enlarged corporate executive committee since 2012, has accepted a new opportunity and will be leaving the company effective 31 July 2018. James Sabry, MD, PhD, 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 corporate executive committee. He will be based in Basel and assume his new role on  August 1, 2018.

Roche’s CEO 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.” Schwan further commented: “I would like to thank Sophie Kornowski-Bonnet for her many significant contributions over the twelve years of her career at Roche and wish her continued success for the future.”

Prior to joining Genentech in his current role in 2010, James 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.