Uni­ty Biotech­nol­o­gy is still reel­ing rough­ly four months af­ter ax­ing its lead pro­gram, as it saw sig­nif­i­cant change at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el Mon­day.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced that ARCH Ven­ture Part­ners’ Bob Nelsen, one of Uni­ty’s co-founders back in 2011, has left the board. In ad­di­tion, pres­i­dent and co-founder Ned David is step­ping down at the end of the year, and an­oth­er board mem­ber, David Lacey, is al­so leav­ing the biotech.

With the de­par­tures, Uni­ty is ap­point­ing Gilmore O’Neill to the board to chair the com­pa­ny’s sci­ence com­mit­tee.

“We are in­cred­i­bly grate­ful to Ned, Bob and Dave for their ser­vice,” chair­man Kei­th Leonard said in a state­ment. “Ned’s ear­ly re­search in­to fun­da­men­tal path­ways of ag­ing bi­ol­o­gy form the foun­da­tion of UNI­TY. Bob played an in­stru­men­tal role in cre­at­ing and shap­ing a com­pa­ny tar­get­ing dis­eases of ag­ing, and David’s drug dis­cov­ery in­sights have shaped our pipeline.”

Mon­day’s moves were not the first de­par­tures since Uni­ty’s lead pro­gram flopped a ma­jor Phase II in os­teoarthri­tis of the knee in Au­gust. That whiff set this re­struc­tur­ing in mo­tion, and Nelsen had long been one of the head­lin­ers in a celebri­ty group of in­vestors that al­so in­clud­ed Jeff Be­zos and Pe­ter Thiel. Uni­ty had raised more than $200 mil­lion over the last decade, hop­ing its big-name part­ners could vault it to the fore­front of the buzzy an­ti-ag­ing field.

The com­pa­ny pre­vi­ous­ly said in Sep­tem­ber it was slash­ing its work­force by 30% in or­der to con­tin­ue its re­fo­cus­ing to­ward oph­thal­mol­o­gy and neu­rol­o­gy, putting the San Fran­cis­co-based biotech on track to em­ploy 75 full-timers by the end of 2020.

Au­gust’s tri­al miss it­self in­volved a 183-per­son study for what was then Uni­ty’s on­ly clin­i­cal pro­gram, UBX0101. Pa­tients in the treat­ment arms showed vir­tu­al­ly no dif­fer­ence com­pared to those tak­ing place­bo, and the can­di­date didn’t even reg­is­ter a dose-de­pen­dent re­sponse.

On­ly pa­tients who re­ceived the low­est dose nu­mer­i­cal­ly out­per­formed the con­trol, but the p-val­ue clocked in at an abysmal p=0.52.

Uni­ty’s big the­o­ry re­volves around what are known as senes­cent cells — non-di­vid­ing cells that clut­ter an ag­ing body. Uni­ty says the buildup in such cells is as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­lease of dozens of pro­teins that pro­mote in­flam­ma­tion, and re­mov­ing them, with­out al­ter­ing the bal­ance of cells the body needs, could pro­mote a longer, health­i­er life.

With the os­teoarthri­tis pro­gram scrapped, Uni­ty is now fo­cus­ing on a dif­fer­ent group of senes­cent cells for eye dis­eases. The next ex­per­i­men­tal drug is UBX1325, which is de­signed to tar­get Bcl-xL. And if all goes ac­cord­ing to plan, Uni­ty ex­pects to dose the first pa­tients in a Phase I study for the can­di­date lat­er this year.

Innoforce is off to the races at its new site in the city of Hangzhou, China.

The Chinese CDMO announced last week that it has started manufacturing at the new facility, which was built to offer process development and manufacturing operations for RNA, plasmid DNA, viral vectors and other cell therapeutics. It will also serve as Innoforce’s corporate HQ.

The company said it’s investing more than $200 million in the 550,000-square-foot manufacturing base for advanced therapies. The GMP manufacturing facility features space for producing plasmids with three 30-liter bioreactors. For viral vector manufacturing, Innoforce also has 200- and 500-liter bioreactors at its disposal, along with eight suites to make cell therapies. The site also includes several labs and warehouse spaces.

As the FDA remains silent on orphan drug exclusivity in the wake of a controversial court case, the agency continues to hand out new designations. The latest: Algernon Pharmaceuticals’ experimental lung disease drug ifenprodil.

The Vancouver-based company announced on Monday that ifenprodil received orphan designation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a chronic lung condition that results in scarring of the lungs.  Most IPF patients suffer with a dry cough, and breathing can become difficult.

Since losing a controversial court case over orphan drug exclusivity last year, the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development has remained entirely silent on orphan exclusivity for any product approved since last November, leaving many sponsors in limbo on what to expect.

That silence means that for more than 70 orphan-designated indications for more than 60 products, OOPD has issued no public determination on the seven-year orphan exclusivity in the Orange Book, and no new listings of orphan exclusivity appear in OOPD’s searchable database, as highlighted recently by George O’Brien, a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington, DC office.