An­oth­er ex­ec­u­tive is mi­grat­ing from the ech­e­lons of Big Phar­ma to the cor­ri­dors of small biotech.

In April 2018, Badrul Chowd­hury took his more than two decades of ex­pe­ri­ence at the FDA to As­traZeneca, where he took on the role of se­nior vice pres­i­dent and chief physi­cian-sci­en­tist for res­pi­ra­to­ry, in­flam­ma­tion and au­toim­mu­ni­ty late-stage de­vel­op­ment in bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals R&D.

Af­ter about a year and a half in this role, Chowd­hury is mov­ing to a small Texas biotech called Savara, where he will serve as chief med­ical of­fi­cer.

Its lead drug, Mol­gradex, is be­ing test­ed for a pletho­ra of or­phan lung dis­eases. Months ago the com­pa­ny’s shares $SVRA took a hit af­ter the drug failed to help pa­tients with a rare res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease called au­toim­mune pul­monary alve­o­lar pro­teinosis (aPAP) in a piv­otal study.

Rob Neville

“His ap­point­ment comes at a crit­i­cal time as we con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions with the FDA and EMA on the best path for­ward for the Mol­gradex aPAP pro­gram,” said Savara chief Rob Neville in a state­ment.

“With two decades of reg­u­la­to­ry lead­er­ship ex­pe­ri­ence at the FDA’s Pul­monary Di­vi­sion, where he presided over nu­mer­ous ap­provals of med­i­cines for pul­monary and or­phan dis­eases, Dr. Chowd­hury brings a unique per­spec­tive to the Com­pa­ny and we be­lieve he will be in­stru­men­tal in help­ing us achieve our goals.”

Chowd­hury’s move from As­traZeneca may have some­thing to do with some big changes im­ple­ment­ed un­der chief Pas­cal So­ri­ot ear­ly in 2019. A sweep­ing re­struc­tur­ing of its R&D en­gine de­lin­eat­ed the com­pa­ny’s on­col­o­gy ef­fort from every­thing else and erad­i­cat­ed the sub­sidiary struc­ture. The process stripped se­nior ex­ec­u­tives from the top ranks of As­traZeneca’s big bi­o­log­ics sub­sidiary Med­Im­mune, which is where Chowd­hury start­ed out.

Chowd­hury is the lat­est name in the ex­ec­u­tive ex­o­dus from As­traZeneca. David Berman, who was head of I/O re­search at As­traZeneca, has tak­en the top R&D job at Im­muno­core, a biotech that al­so lured Med­Im­mune chief Bahi­ja Jal­lal to take on the CEO role. Berman left As­traZeneca ahead of the re­struc­tur­ing that al­so in­clud­ed the de­par­ture of CMO Sean Bo­hen.

An FDA advisory committee noted with concern a small safety database but unanimously endorsed a Horizon Therapeutics drug for a rare eye autoimmune disease that can blind patients: teprotumumab for thyroid eye disease (TED).

“It was a pretty easy vote,” said Erica Brittain, an NIH biostatistician and one of the 12 panelists on FDA’s Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee.

Timing is Everything
When we launched Octagon Therapeutics in late 2017, I was convinced that the time was right for a new antibiotic discovery venture. The company was founded on impressive academic pedigree and the management team had known each other for years. Our first program was based on a compelling approach to targeting central metabolism in the most dangerous bacterial pathogens. We had already shown a high level of efficacy in animal infection models and knew our drug was safe in humans.

Amid Shehnaaz Suliman’s lengthy resume it could be easy to miss her stint leading early-stage Alzheimer’s R&D at Genentech, where she oversaw a program for the ill-fated crenezumab and initiated one of the first prevention studies around the devastating neurodegenerative disease. But it is this experience that she — after thinking long and hard about her next career move over the past months — will be leaning heavily on as the first president and COO of Alector.

Biogen’s fierce focus on disorders of the brain has hit another roadblock.

On Friday, the US drugmaker — which recently resurrected its amyloid-targeting Alzheimer’s drug, aducanumab — said its anti-tau drug, gosuranemab, failed a mid-stage study in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare brain disorder that results from deterioration of brain cells that control movement and thought.