When the FDA’s Vac­cines and Re­lat­ed Bi­o­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee meets next month to dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ment and au­tho­riza­tion of Covid-19 vac­cines, the chair­woman won’t be there.

Hana El Sahly

Hana El Sahly has re­cused her­self from the ex­pert pan­el’s re­view of the top­ic, cit­ing her role as a lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor in Mod­er­na’s Phase III tri­al, Reuters re­port­ed. An as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of vi­rol­o­gy and mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy at Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine in Hous­ton, El Sahly was ap­point­ed the chair­woman last year.

The FDA has yet to re­lease the ros­ter for the Oct. 22 meet­ing. The vac­cine ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee cur­rent­ly con­sists of 15 vot­ing mem­bers; they are set to de­lib­er­ate on Covid-19 vac­cines gen­er­al­ly in­stead of de­bat­ing any spe­cif­ic ap­pli­ca­tion.

While this marks the first in­stance an FDA ad­vi­sor has stepped aside due to po­ten­tial or per­ceived con­flict of in­ter­est, it fol­lows two high-pro­file res­ig­na­tions from Mod­er­na’s board for the same rea­son.

Mon­cef Slaoui, the for­mer head of Glax­o­SmithK­line’s vac­cines de­part­ment, stepped off once the White House tapped him as the chief sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­sor of Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed. Two months lat­er, Brigham and Women’s pres­i­dent Eliz­a­beth Nabel fol­lowed in his foot­steps as her hos­pi­tal was set to be a site for Mod­er­na’s Phase III tri­al.

Work­ing on the broad­er, na­tion­al lev­el, El Sahly re­cent­ly de­scribed her role to the lo­cal af­fil­i­ate ABC13: “Re­view­ing the re­lat­ed doc­u­ments, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions that sort of laid the ground for the process of get­ting the study start­ed.”

Al­though reg­u­la­tors are not bound to fol­low the ad­comm’s rec­om­men­da­tions, this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing is spe­cial. FDA com­mis­sion­er Stephen Hahn has spot­light­ed the event — which will be open to the pub­lic — as an il­lus­tra­tion of the kind of trans­paren­cy and sci­ence-dri­ven ap­proach that his agency is striv­ing for.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

Roche announced another leadership shuffle Thursday morning – the head of global product strategy, Teresa Graham, will take over as CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals in March while the company’s corporate executive committee will make a spot for Levi Garraway, CMO and executive VP of global product development.

Thomas Schinecker will take over the top spot as Roche group CEO in March, leaving his spot as head of diagnostics.

Following a promise last year to go “big and fast in breast cancer,” Gilead has secured a win for Trodelvy in the most common form.

The drug was approved to treat HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients who’ve already received endocrine-based therapy and at least two other systemic therapies for metastatic cancer, Gilead announced on Friday.

Trodelvy won its first indication in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer back in 2020, and has since added urothelial cancer to the list. HR-positive HER2-negative breast cancer accounts for roughly 70% of new breast cancer cases worldwide per year, according to senior VP of oncology clinical development Bill Grossman, and many patients develop resistance to endocrine-based therapies or worsen on chemotherapy.

Plant-based Covid-19 vaccine developer Medicago shut down this week with little fanfare. And its two subsidiaries, Medicago R&D and Medicago USA, are also closing their doors, according to a company news release.

The lone shareholder left standing, Japan-based Mitsubishi Chemical Group, “has determined not to make further investments in Medicago and to proceed with an orderly wind-up of its business and operations in Canada and in the United States.”

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.