Ready to transform itself into a serious mid- to late-stage cancer player that could take on rivals as big as AstraZeneca, a Pfizer-partnered biotech is embracing some big changes.

Eli Lilly vet Kim Blackwell is succeeding Anthony Sun as CEO of Zentalis. Sun, a former VC at Aisling who co-founded Zentalis in 2015, will remain at the helm of its Asia-focused joint venture, Zentera.

Blackwell’s mandate will be to speed up the development of the two lead candidates. Zentalis has also raised $200 million from an underwritten offering that priced its stock at $19.38 per share.

Months after touting some fuzzy top-line readouts, AstraZeneca and its biotech partner Avillion today are detailing the data they’re taking to regulators for its asthma drug.

The candidate PT027 is an inhaled, fixed-dose rescue medication containing albuterol, a common asthma treatment containing short-acting beta2-agonist (SABA), and budesonide — an inhaled and commonly used corticosteroid.

Green Valley Pharma, the Shanghai drugmaker that scored a stunning approval to market an Alzheimer’s drug in China two years ago, has shuttered a Phase III trial that would’ve paved its way to the FDA.

A lack of funding had forced its hand, according to the biotech, which said its commercial sales had withered amid a new Covid-19 outbreak in China. It tried to raise additional financing but was unable to due to “geopolitical circumstances and a chilly capital market for biomedical investments.”

Roche trumpeted a “major advancement” in the retinal space with the approval of its eye drug Susvimo last October, touting it as a more manageable option for patients with wet age-related macular degeneration. However, safety concerns leave some physicians hesitant.

While most ophthalmologists have heard of Susvimo — 86%, according to the latest Spherix survey of 76 doctors — only one in ten believe the benefits completely outweigh the risks. And a majority of the respondents said they’d turn to Regeneron’s Eylea as a safer and more accessible option.

After AbbVie’s Rinvoq first got approved back in 2019, JAK inhibitors have been clouded by numerous safety issues and events, like with rival Pfizer’s Xeljanz. Now with the newest study out of AbbVie, there might be room to follow the route its sales king Humira did — expanding the drug into other indications and calming concerns about the drug class.

AbbVie announced top-line results earlier this week from a Phase III study for upadacitinib, its JAK inhibitor that had been previously approved for rheumatoid arthritis. The study, called U-ENDURE, was a 52-week maintenance study in adults with moderate to severe Crohn’s disease “who had an inadequate response or were intolerant to a conventional or biologic therapy.” Rinvoq met the co-primary endpoints of endoscopic response and clinical remission, as well as the secondary endpoint of endoscopic remission.

Bristol Myers Squibb continues to tout more data for its experimental psoriasis drug that it hopes will shake up the market.

The pharmaceutical giant posted two-year results from a long-term extension study of deucravacitinib, showing the drug remained effective after two years. The drug, which analysts predict can bring in billions in sales by 2026, is an oral TYK2 inhibitor for adult patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.