Mike Varney

Mike Varney is the former Executive Vice President and Head of Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED), where he was responsible for all aspects of drug discovery and development for the US based R&D organization in Roche and served as a member of the Roche Corporate Executive Committee.

Mike began his career in 1987 as one one of the first employees at Agouron. When Pfizer acquired Agouron in 2000, Mike was selected to lead Drug Discovery for Pfizer’s San Diego organization. In 2005, Mike was recruited to Genentech to take the company beyond biologics and create a small molecule drug discovery capability.

Mike holds a B.S. in Chemistry from UCLA, a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Caltech and was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at Columbia.