Frank Zhang isn’t going back to Legend Biotech any time soon.

More than a month after the Somerset, NJ-based company disclosed that Zhang was placed under house arrest in China for a customs investigation, it has installed Ying Huang — its CFO and interim CEO since late September — as the permanent leader, while tapping board director Ye (Sally) Wang as the chairwoman.

Zhang used to hold both of those titles. In a statement, Legend said he remains on the board of directors and offered his support through a written proxy. There is no update on his status.

Laurence Reid could have picked a better time to take his latest CEO job.

It was January 29 when Decibel Therapeutics announced they were bringing in the former Alnylam and Millennium exec, and the coronavirus was still a distant threat, not even yet named. The job would have been tall enough without a pandemic; after five years and $100 million, Decibel was preparing to pivot its platform in a new direction, working to expand on gene therapy and regeneration. Reid would need to raise the cash to do so.

In yet another smudge on bluebird bio’s track record for execution, the biotech is pushing back the filing for its gene therapy in sickle cell disease by a year due to a new data requirement from the FDA.

With the setback, bluebird joins a league of gene therapy developers — from BioMarin to Voyager — that have been hampered by CMC issues. While somewhat unexpected, the regulators’ request highlights their stringency around manufacturing and quality control.

Allogene has been riding high since ASCO in May, when early data showed their off-the-shelf CAR-T worked in a handful of patients and that no one rejected their foreign cells. It was a key moment in a field that could remake cell therapy and treatment for certain cancers.

On Wednesday, though, the Arie Belldegrun-founded biotech released results for their multiple myeloma CAR-T and, although the responses were there, so was a red flag: Four patients contracted a serious infection, and one of them died.

Close to two years after Juno Therapeutics disappeared from Nasdaq, a CAR-T biotech it spawned is settling on a stock exchange on the other side of the globe.

JW Therapeutics, a joint venture between Juno and WuXi AppTec, raised $300 million in its IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange — building on $190 in venture money since launching in 2018.

The pitch is all about bringing cell therapy breakthroughs to China, tapping into American connections that extend into Lyell, a new startup led by Juno co-founder Rick Klausner, and Eureka, a longtime partner of Juno. WuXi, a global CRO, brings expertise in process development and manufacturing to the mix.

As the buzz builds around messenger RNA (mRNA) technology’s use for two leading Covid-19 candidates, manufacturers and regulatory professionals are facing facts: This is not simple technology.

Complex manufacturing processes, delivery vehicles that must be treated more as drug substances than excipients, and potential immunogenicity headaches are among the challenges industry faces as this promising technology is harnessed to address an increasing number of health conditions.