Jens Eckstein (Pictured) will become president of SR One, UK-based drugs company GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) corporate venturing unit, at the start of next month.
He replaces Christoph Westphal, who will be leaving at the end of the year to focus on external business interests, including the Longwood Founders Fund, in which GSK is an investor.
Eckstein, a venture partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Germany-based venture capital firm TVM Capital, will report to GSK’s research and development chairman Moncef Slaoui and be based in Boston, US.
Moncef said: "Jens’s training as a chemist, his experience in pharmaceutical discovery and development and his accomplishments as a biotech entrepreneur will provide SR One with continued strong leadership."
Prior to joining TVM in 2004, Eckstein worked at Enanta Pharmaceuticals and Mitotix. He was also an adviser to TVM-backed Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, which GSK acquired in 2008 for $720m and had been chaired by Westphal until its takeover. Boston-based Eckstein has also been president of SelectX Pharmaceuticals since April having been a director on the TVM-backed portfolio company since 2008.
Eckstein had been one of TVM’s life sciences partner in Boston. Helmut Schühsler, managing partner of TVM Capital in Munich, by email said: " Jens is not the last of the life science partners. Mark Cipriano, our corporate finance general partner, is still there and will stay. The office will not be closed, but will function as our ‘US execution office’ for LS [life sciences] and IT [information technology] deals, with Mark Cipriano taking care of the LS deals. We intend to stay in Boston for the time being, and also continue to make investments on the east coast, but all of this is predicated on raising a new fund, our 7th generation life science fund. Until then, like so many other firms, we have to reduce team size and get leaner as our funds get older. This is true for Boston and for Munich in the same way."