Roche Makes Changes to Executive Committee Following Departure of its Head of Partnering

There is another change coming to the senior leadership team at Swiss pharma giant Roche. Sophie Kornowski-Bonnet, the head of Roche Partnering is leaving the company. James Sabry, currently head of partnering for Genentech, will become global head of partnering for Roche, the company said.

Kornowski-Bonnet joined Roche in 2007 as general manager of the company’s operations in France. She came to Roche from Merck Sharp & Dohme’s France unit, where she held multiple roles during her tenure, including the head of cardiovascular and rheumatology. Roche said Kornowski-Bonnet was leaving Roche for a new opportunity. Her last day with the Swiss company will be July 31, Roche said in its announcement.

Sabry assumes his new role as global head of partnering on Aug. 1. The position, Roche said, “combines the partnering functions across the Roche pharmaceuticals business.” Prior to joining Genentech in his current role in 2010, Sabry was CEO of a start-up biotech company and was founder and head of Cytokinetics, a biopharmaceutical company in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sabry, who currently lives in the San Francisco area, will be based in Basel, Switzerland when he assumes his new duties.

Roche Chief Executive Officer Severin Schwan said he was pleased to tap Sabry as the 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 said in a brief statement.

Roche Partnering is a significant area of growing importance for the pharma giant. The division looks for potential pharma and diagnostic partners to advance research to develop therapeutics to benefit patients across a wide range of care areas.

In addition to praising Sabry, Schwan also thanked Kornowski-Bonnet for her 12 years at the company. He said during her tenure at Roche she made “many significant contributions” and added that he wished her continued success in her future.

The shifting roles of Sabry and Kornowski-Bonnet are not the only ones that Roche has seen lately. In March John C. Reed, head of Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED), decided to leave the company and return to the United States for personal reasons. Reed had been with the company since 2013. William Pao, who served as Global Head of the Oncology Discovery and Translational Area for pRED, took over for Reed in April. Pao has been with Roche since 2014. Before Roche, Pao served as director of Personalized Cancer Medicine at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. As a researcher, Pao “identified new molecular mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance of lung cancers to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and yielded important insights into a molecular understanding of lung cancer and other malignancies,” Roche said.