9 January 2019 - - US-based biopharmaceutical company Genevant Sciences has appointed Margrit Schwarz, PhD, MBA as chief scientific officer and head of R and D, and Pete Zorn, JD as chief operating officer, the company said.

Margrit Schwarz, PhD, MBA joins Genevant from Roche Pharmaceuticals, Basel, Switzerland, where she was vice president and Global Head, External Innovation.

Prior to the engagement at Roche, Dr. Schwarz held appointments as VP and Therapeutic Area Head at Boehringer Ingelheim, Ridgefield, CT, and director Research at Amgen, South San Francisco, CA.

At both companies, she has built preclinical pipelines for cardiometabolic diseases and dyslipidemia, with five drug candidates advanced into clinical development under her tenure, including an anti-PCSK9 mAb launched in 2015 as Repatha for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia.

Prior to joining Amgen, Dr. Schwarz held scientific leadership roles in discovery research at F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, and at Tularik, South San Francisco. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cologne, Germany and an MBA from Columbia University, New York, and is the author of numerous publications and several issued patents.

Pete Zorn served most recently as chief corporate officer and general counsel at Albireo Pharma where he led the corporate development, legal, corporate communications and human resource functions.

While at Albireo, Zorn successfully negotiated and executed the strategic share exchange that resulted in its becoming a public company, as well as several other value-creating transactions.

Previously, he was general counsel and vice president, communications at Santaris Pharma, an RNA therapeutics company acquired by Roche, and senior vice president and general counsel at Targacept, where he was instrumental in a variety of significant milestones, including its company-launching spinout, IPO and additional financings, business operations achievements and multiple complex collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies.

Zorn began his career at a large law firm in North Carolina and received his undergraduate degree with honors from Harvard and his law degree with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Genevant has a pipeline of nucleic acid-based medicines.