Sara Kenkare-Mi­tra leaves Genen­tech for a chance to lead neu­ro R&D; Glax­o­SmithK­line alum jumps to Vi­for Phar­ma with the lid lift­ed on sale to CSL

Sara Kenkare-Mi­tra spent more than 23 years at biotech be­he­moth Genen­tech, climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der from small mol­e­cule sci­en­tist all the way up to SVP of de­vel­op­men­tal sci­ences. At the same time, she was an ad­junct pro­fes­sor at her al­ma mater, UC San Fran­cis­co.

But things have changed. Thurs­day was her first full day at her new job as pres­i­dent and head of R&D at neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease play­er Alec­tor — just a few months af­ter Glax­o­SmithK­line dropped $700 mil­lion up­front to part­ner with the San Fran­cis­co biotech on neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkin­son’s, amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis and fron­totem­po­ral de­men­tia.

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