What will Boston Pharmaceuticals CEO Sophie Kornowski do now that the company is selling off its pipeline and winding down operations? Whatever it is, data will take her there.
Sophie Kornowski probably knows more than any other CEO that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Growing up in Paris, “my father was a pharmacist, and he used to bring home potions for us to select the flavor as kids. And I thought this was really cool, the chemistry side of things was very impressive,” Kornowski, the outgoing CEO of Boston Pharmaceuticals, told BioSpace in an interview.
Being set on becoming an actress, she didn’t immediately consider medicine as a career option, but she later returned to the idea and hasn’t looked back since. “Chemistry got me really in love with pharmacy, and I’ve really enjoyed … the medicine side of things, the product, and of course, the patients and the outcome,” Kornowski said. “I have never regretted that choice.”
Kornowski now sits at a crossroads in her career. Boston Pharmaceuticals recently sold off its lead Phase III liver disease asset to GSK for up to $2 billion, and she’s seeing through the winding down of the company. After that, she has a big decision to make: What’s next?
Just the Beginning
Kornowski’s first job was at Abbott Diagnostics fresh out of college in France. She entered the industry amid a raging AIDS epidemic, which made an impact on her. She eventually rode Abbott to its Chicago headquarters before heading back to school at the University of Chicago. From there, she returned to Abbott before making the leap to Big Pharma, including stints at Sanofi, Merck and finally Roche, where she was head of partnering.
In that role, Kornowski was in charge of building out the famed Swiss pharma’s pipeline. By the time she left, over half of its molecules had come from deals she executed. But there was one problem. Kornowski would become heavily invested in these assets during the dealmaking process. But then, once the handshakes were done and the programs folded into Roche, she lost track of them.
“Even though you say the deal is only the beginning, you’re here only for the beginning,” she said. “Even though the adventure of the deal is crazy hard and all of that, I just wanted to be part of being responsible for results.”
Even though Kornowski wasn’t personally shepherding therapies through the clinic, the deals she was involved with have certainly delivered. Kornowski was pivotal in the acquisition of Foundation Medicine, the genomic profiling biotech that Roche bought in 2018 for $2.4 billion. She also worked on Roche’s $600 million 2013 Prothena deal, which has culminated today into a Parkinson’s disease program. While the antibody prasinezumab missed in a Phase II trial, the partners announced last month that they will advance it into Phase III.
Kornowski’s deal book has some duds, too, which is to be expected in the business of drug developments. She was recently excited to see Sanofi’s $9.5 billion acquisition of Blueprint Medicines, because she worked on an earlier licensing partnership between the biotech and Roche. That partnership didn’t work out and Roche handed back rights to the programs the two companies had been working on, but she’s happy to see Blueprint go on to succeed.
“Severin Schwan had this great expression when he asked me to join, which was, most of what you do will not succeed, but if you do nothing, then you’re also not going to succeed,” Kornowski remembers, speaking of the former Roche CEO who stepped down in 2023.
During her time at Roche, Swiss entrepreneur Ernesto Bertarelli was forming Gurnet Point Capital. He would eventually ask Kornowski to join as an investor, giving her hands-on experience in biotech company formation and venture capital.
Despite all that, Kornowski realized she was missing R&D and innovation. Bertarelli then asked her to help a company in Gurnet’s portfolio, Boston Pharma.
Boston’s Overhaul
Kornowski arrived as CEO in 2022 with a big job to do. Boston Pharma’s pipeline was overflowing with projects the company would never be able to finish. So Kornowski narrowed its focus to candidates for liver diseases, specifically the FGF21 analog efimosfermin alfa. She recalls that it was a tough job to bring the Boston Pharma team on board with such a dramatic change in direction.
“I’m not the best at change management, but I have learned how to explain and I also use data,” she said. The decisions were carefully made with advisors who studied drug development plans, cost potential and other aspects. “It’s not instinct. It’s not vision. It’s data.”
She continued: “If you have the right team, and you explain why you have to do something and how you’re going to do it, then you do take them along with you.”
Data analytics and benchmarking have become a pillar of Kornowski’s leadership. She needs that hard data to make decisions and never makes assumptions about where she might end up.
“I don’t know how to navigate any other way. Maybe because I have no sense of direction. I’m not someone you put me in the street, and I know exactly where [to go],” she said. “I need evidence.”
She also notes that her experience with both successful and not-so-successful deals at Roche prepared her for Boston Pharma. The biggest takeaway for her was the power of the due diligence process and being ready at any time.
“When you’re in biotech, don’t hope to be bought. It doesn’t work like [that],” she said. “Just do your work really thoroughly and be ready to show it all in minute detail, because this is what due diligence is going to be like.”
Moving On
With Boston Pharma now winding down, the due diligence is over. Kornowski has another early pipeline asset to deal with but otherwise is in a transitional period, serving as a consultant to GSK as needed for a while longer.
“It’s hard to let go, but that’s what my job is about,” she said.
She plans to seek a board seat and eventually move on to Switzerland. Another CEO role is not out of the question, although Kornowski was noncommittal on her exact next steps. But Boston Pharma and its MASH drug will be another legacy for Kornowski, in a disease that, prior to Boston’s and Madrigal Pharmaceuticals’ interest, didn’t have any treatment options.
She remembers visiting patients with the disease alongside experts in the field and seeing the dire situation they were in, worrying about their own survival. “If you don’t have health, your life is a very different story. So that’s again, why I love pharmacy.”
