Simba Gill will be staying put as CEO of Evelo Biosciences for now.

Gill announced last year that he would be leaving the head position at Evelo to take on the role of executive partner at Flagship Pioneering. He was aiming to stay on until a successor was selected, but there’s a new course of action in the wake of a Phase II miss and a reduced headcount.

“I want to emphasize that I remain personally committed to Evelo and staying on to lead the organization. I continue to believe that Evelo is a remarkable opportunity in terms of the science, the platform, the type of products that we’re able to produce, and most importantly, the potential of millions of patients suffering from all stages of inflammatory disease,” Gill said on a conference call.

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On a continued mission to set a high bar for its R&D group — which now gears heavily toward vaccines and specialty medicines — GSK has swept two programs out of its early- to mid-stage pipeline.

GSK reported in its latest quarterly update that it’d deleted a compound dubbed GSK3915393 from its pipeline. The compound inhibits an enzyme known as transglutaminase 2, or TG2, and the company was previously looking into its application in celiac disease.

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Novartis has cleaned up its Phase III slate, shelving late-stage plans for programs across inflammatory diseases and cancer, the Swiss pharma giant disclosed in its quarterly update — while also putting a mid-stage Huntington’s drug to bed and switching things up for a key rare disease candidate.

The biggest change came in the decision to abandon a Phase III trial for Cosentyx, Novartis’ blockbuster IL-17A antibody, in active peripheral spondyloarthritis. It didn’t end up recruiting any of the 324 patients planned before terminating the trial earlier this month due to a “strategic decision of senior management,” according to records on clinicaltrials.gov.

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It’s been less than two months since Instil Bio revealed it would cut 60% of its US-based staff as the biotech scrapped its lead cell therapy to focus on next-gen efforts — but execs are already going for the next round of layoffs.

In an extension of its workforce reduction, Instil Bio is shrinking its US-based team to around 15 employees who will lead global business operations. It marks a stark move for a company that’s headquartered in Dallas and previously reported leasing offices in Greater Los Angeles as well as other parts of the US, and that counted more than 450 employees around the world just over a year ago.

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Pfizer is culling a number of programs in its pipeline, it disclosed in an update linked to its fourth quarter earnings call Tuesday.

Among those is recifercept, a drug for a form of dwarfism called achondroplasia that was the centerpiece of Pfizer’s buyout of rare disease outfit Therachon in 2019. At the time, Pfizer paid $340 million upfront, with an additional $470 million in milestones. In its earnings presentation, Pfizer said that the drug had failed a Phase II study.

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A new biotech out of Lincoln, NE, launched Monday aiming to tackle what it says is an unaddressed need in the pneumococcal vaccine space.

Aeolian Biotech debuted with a promise to fill the gaps left by currently approved pneumococcal vaccines using its own shot. The company aims to accomplish this with its sole candidate, iPCV22, which was developed by former Wyeth/Pfizer researchers Jack Love and Bruce Forrest, who worked on the Prevnar project and are now Aeolian co-founders.

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