Big Phar­ma just struck its sec­ond dis­tri­b­u­tion deal with the grow­ing glob­al med­ical mar­i­jua­na busi­ness.

Nine months af­ter No­var­tis’ San­doz group al­lied it­self with Tilray, the med­ical cannabis grow­er Can­ndoc says it will use Te­va’s SLE group to dis­trib­ute its med­ical cannabis prod­ucts in Is­rael, and then spear­head the glob­al dis­tri­b­u­tion of its prod­ucts to mar­kets around the world where med­ical cannabis is le­gal.

“Through its SLE part­ner­ship, Can­ndoc has aligned it­self with one of the most promi­nent phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in the world, for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of cannabis-based med­ical treat­ments to coun­tries that rec­og­nize the val­ue of these med­i­cines for peo­ple in need,” not­ed com­pa­ny chair­man Ehud Barak in a state­ment.

Barak is the for­mer prime min­is­ter of Is­rael, un­der­scor­ing just how deeply en­trenched the com­pa­ny is with the coun­try’s busi­ness es­tab­lish­ment. Back in April, Haaretz re­port­ed that Can­ndoc was do­ing a road­show for an IPO on Nas­daq and talk­ing up its shot at a uni­corn val­u­a­tion of around $5 bil­lion.

But the bloom has come off the mar­ket rose, with share prices at the top play­ers like Tilray wilt­ing as the overnight mar­ket bub­ble that grew up around mar­i­jua­na quick­ly de­flat­ed. Share prices may be down, but Te­va and No­var­tis clear­ly see some longterm po­ten­tial in med­ical mar­i­jua­na. And more of their col­leagues in the busi­ness may well fol­low.

Can­ndoc is a sub­sidiary of In­ter­Cure and has cul­ti­va­tion sites in Is­rael as well as JVs un­der­way for cul­ti­va­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in the EU and Cana­da. In­ter­Cure al­so has mi­nor­i­ty stakes in 2 biotech com­pa­nies, Re­gen­era and Nov­el­lus.

The biotech industry has faced repeated calls to diversify its workforce — and in the last year, those calls got a lot louder. Though women account for just under half of all biotech employees around the world, they occupy very few places in C-suites, and even fewer make it to the helm.

Some companies are listening, according to a recent BIO survey which showed that this year’s companies were 2.5 times more likely to have a diversity and inclusion program compared to last year’s sample. But we still have a long way to go. Women represent just 31% of biotech executives, BIO reported. And those numbers are even more stark for women of color.

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

After a busy weekend at #ESMO21, which included a big readout for its KRAS drug adagrasib in colon cancer, Mirati Therapeutics is ready to keep the pressure on competitor Amgen with lung cancer data that will undergird an upcoming filing.

In topline results from a Phase II cohort of its KRYSTAL-1 study, adagrasib posted a response rate of 43% in second-line-or-later patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer containing a KRAS-G12C mutation, Mirati said Monday.