Just days af­ter we learned that BeiGene CMO of hema­tol­ogy Jane Huang was plan­ning her ex­it, we now know what she’s do­ing next. Pre­lude Ther­a­peu­tics, a lit­tle biotech fo­cused on can­cer R&D, has re­cruit­ed Huang as its next pres­i­dent and CMO — and they’re back­ing up the play with a chunk of eq­ui­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing, the Genen­tech vet is get­ting a $525,000 a year in salary, a bonus worth up to half of that and 150,000 shares that vest over 4 years — a clas­sic com­bo for top ex­ecs. She al­so gets an op­tion on 460,000 shares that will vest over time.

Like a lot of biotechs that went pub­lic in 2020, though, those shares $PRLD are on­ly worth a frac­tion of the $89 peak achieved af­ter the IPO. Shares have shed 90% of their val­ue since late 2020, with an 85% tum­ble in the past year.

Kris Vad­di

Found­ing CEO Kris Vad­di out of In­cyte raised $158 mil­lion for the biotech in the IPO, but its mar­ket cap had shrunk to $400 mil­lion as of the start of the day. Vad­di start­ed the com­pa­ny in 2016.

Huang’s fo­cus will now shift to PRMT5 — pro­tein argi­nine methyl­trans­ferase 5 — a tar­get that Or­biMed backed in a big way dur­ing the start­up phase. PRMT5, they hope, plays a big role in can­cer, linked to cell pro­lif­er­a­tion and apop­to­sis re­sis­tance.

Back in the sum­mer of 2019, Pre­lude had hired David Mau­ro as its CMO to fol­low up on the lead drug: PRT543. An­oth­er Big Phar­ma vet, Mau­ro had come over from Check­mate but de­part­ed last fall.

But PRT543 is ev­i­dent­ly be­ing down­grad­ed in the pipeline. In a sep­a­rate re­lease out to­day, Pre­lude says that it has de­cid­ed to pri­or­i­tize PRT811 over the old lead be­cause of its “su­pe­ri­or safe­ty pro­file, high­er lev­el of tar­get en­gage­ment, and unique brain pen­e­trant prop­er­ties.” Ac­cord­ing to clin­i­cal­tri­als.gov, PRT543 is in an on­go­ing dose-es­ca­la­tion study.

GSK just re­cent­ly sig­naled that it’s killing its ear­ly-stage PRMT5 pro­gram, fol­lowed by a sim­i­lar move by Pfiz­er while Am­gen con­tin­ues to fo­cus there.

We asked the com­pa­ny to clar­i­fy the fate of PRT543 but did not get an im­me­di­ate re­sponse.

Pre­lude al­so has an MCL1 in­hibitor in the clin­ic com­bined with vene­to­clax. The drug, dubbed PRT1419, should have a read­out lat­er this year.

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”