One of the iconic brands in biopharma, Pfizer took a big gamble on the strength of its in-house science when it decided to offload its flagging Upjohn generics business last year. Now, a more agile Pfizer is looking to cement its identity for the future, but one thing will stay the same: M&A is still very much a part of the game plan.

With its Upjohn generics business off the books, Pfizer is looking to double down on its branded medicines with the goal of hitting 6% annual growth each year — previously unheard-of at old Pfizer — while continuing to develop its blockbuster pipeline, CEO Albert Bourla said at a JP Morgan fireside chat Tuesday.

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After decades of failures laid waste to R&D outfits looking to solve the KRAS G12C puzzle, Amgen is as close as anyone ever has been to an approval with sotorasib. For Amgen R&D head David Reese, the drug’s looming review date is a point of reflection for his own career and a big milestone for Amgen’s blooming — if controversial — next-gen oncology pipeline.

Amgen filed its FDA application for sotorasib in December to treat metastatic non-small cell lung cancer with the KRAS mutation — once thought to be “undruggable” — months after the agency offered its breakthrough designation based on pivotal Phase I data showing previously unheard of response rates.

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Kathy High has re-emerged in the gene therapy space just as unexpectedly as she left Spark Therapeutics close to a year ago.

Her newest title will be president, therapeutics at AskBio, the biotech “race horse” that Bayer has just bought for $2 billion cash to build a cell and gene therapy unit around.

On the surface, the circumstances are not unlike Spark, which was getting absorbed into Roche following a $4.3 billion buyout. High, 68, was credited for both steering Luxturna toward an approval for a rare inherited eye disease caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene, setting up gene therapy research in hemophilia A and leading a Phase I/II trial for hemophilia B.

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One of the true success stories in biopharma, New York’s Regeneron has built a $51 billion market cap under the watchful eyes of co-founders and 32-year veterans Len Schleifer and George Yancopoulos. That success has made both men wealthy, even as Regeneron’s investor returns have flagged in recent years.

Regeneron’s ambitions are still sky high moving ahead — and just how much the company can capitalize on that vision could spell enormous paydays for its founders.

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There’s a changing of the guard underway in the senior ranks of Pfizer’s R&D team.

Chief medical officer Mace Rothenberg, who helped lead the pharma giant to 6 new drug approvals in the last 2 years, is stepping aside from his high profile perch and handing the job to Aida Habtezion, a physician scientist who’s been doing research on leukocytes at Stanford.

Rothenberg put out the word on social media Monday, though he didn’t say just what he had on his mind for the next chapter in his career. He told me via LinkedIn, though, that he’s most interested in finding some key board positions where he can be most useful.

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