Bioreg­num Opin­ion Col­umn by John Car­roll

We’re see­ing the C-suites of a whole group of biotech and phar­ma com­pa­nies in flux this week as lead­er­ship groups evolve and top ex­ecs hunt big­ger and bet­ter things for their ca­reers. Most of this news is en­cap­su­lat­ed in short, dry re­marks re­served for SEC fil­ings.

But the de­part­ing CMO at Ther­a­vance $TBPH, Brett Hau­mann, clear­ly want­ed it wide­ly known that he’s mak­ing a re­luc­tant ex­it at the com­pa­ny af­ter a 7-year stint. His 8-K this week notes he’s go­ing to change scenes and move to the UK as much for fam­i­ly rea­sons as any­thing else. And the note quotes him di­rect­ly.

(A)s you know, my wife and I are be­com­ing le­gal guardians to my sis­ter-in-law’s young son af­ter she sad­ly passed away. In or­der to sup­port his tran­si­tion in­to our fam­i­ly this year, I will need to be based full-time in the UK, rather than spend­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of my time in the US as I have done for the past sev­er­al years pri­or to the cur­rent pan­dem­ic trav­el re­stric­tions. Al­though I was not ac­tive­ly look­ing for a role, I have been for­tu­nate enough to be pre­sent­ed with a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty that is dif­fer­ent from Ther­a­vance Bio­phar­ma in both stage and ther­a­peu­tic fo­cus, that will al­low me to ap­ply my ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence to new chal­lenges and be based in the UK, aligned with our plans for our nephew. I have not come to this de­ci­sion light­ly and will be sad­dened to leave the com­pa­ny that has pro­vid­ed me with such a re­ward­ing set of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ences over the past 7 years.

It’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that be­hind every move in the in­dus­try is a host of per­son­al events we don’t usu­al­ly know any­thing about.

Hau­mann, a physi­cian, spent 15 years de­vel­op­ing his skills at GSK be­fore de­part­ing and tak­ing the biotech trail.

Ther­a­vance is look­ing for his re­place­ment now.

As concerns rise around the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines, global attention is increasingly turning to the little, 33-year-old, productless, bankruptcy-flirting biotech that could: Novavax.

In the now 16-month race to develop and deploy Covid-19 vaccines, Novavax has at times seemed like the pandemic’s most unsuspecting frontrunner and at times like an overhyped also-ran. Although they started the pandemic with only enough cash to last 6 months, they leveraged old connections and believers into $2 billion and emerged last summer with data experts said surpassed Pfizer and Moderna. They unveiled plans to quickly scale to 2 billion doses. Then they couldn’t even make enough material to run their US trial and watched four other companies beat them to the finish line.

The FDA wrapped up its inspection of Emergent’s troubled vaccine manufacturing plant in Baltimore on Tuesday, after halting production there on Monday. By Wednesday morning, the agency already released a series of scathing observations on the cross contamination, sanitary issues and lack of staff training that caused the contract manufacturer to dispose of millions of AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine doses.

Although Thursday’s Senate health committee hearing was focused on how foreign countries and adversaries might be trying to steal or negatively influence biomedical research in the US, the only country mentioned by the senators and expert witnesses was China.

Committee chair Patty Murray (D-WA) made clear in her opening remarks that the US cannot “let the few instances of bad actors” overshadow the hard work of the many immigrant researchers in the US, many of which have won Nobel prizes for their work. But she also said, “There is more the NIH can be doing here.”