Al­most three years af­ter pick­ing up the ba­ton from Art Krieg to help steer Check­mate’s TLR9 ag­o­nist deep­er in­to the clin­ic, CEO Bar­ry Labinger is out.

Alan Fuhrman, a board mem­ber and chair­man of the au­dit com­mit­tee, has stepped in to fill the in­ter­im pres­i­dent and CEO role, steady­ing the ship with his back­ground in fi­nan­cial op­er­a­tions. A for­mer board di­rec­tor at Loxo On­col­o­gy, Fuhrman has al­so been CFO at Am­plyx, Mir­na and Am­bit.

The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of work­ing with Krieg, the CSO, to pre­pare its mid-stage drug for ap­proval — and set up po­ten­tial com­mer­cial­iza­tion — will fall on a new per­ma­nent CEO whom Check­mate has be­gun a search for.

“Our strate­gic pri­or­i­ty is to rapid­ly ad­vance our vidu­tolimod clin­i­cal pro­gram to­ward mean­ing­ful clin­i­cal da­ta, and I am ex­cit­ed to lead the Com­pa­ny at this im­por­tant time,” Fuhrman.

Check­mate has es­sen­tial­ly all its eggs in the vidu­tolimod bas­ket, set­ting up com­bo tri­als over the years with PD-1 in­hibitors: Mer­ck’s Keytru­da, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s Op­di­vo and Re­gen­eron’s Lib­tayo. The idea is that ac­ti­vat­ing TLR9, a re­cep­tor that trig­gers a chain re­ac­tion re­sult­ing in pro-in­flam­ma­to­ry cy­tokine re­sponse, in tu­mors can fight can­cer even among pa­tients who are re­frac­to­ry to an­ti-PD-1 drugs.

Mike Pow­ell

Labinger led the biotech to Nas­daq with a $75 mil­lion IPO with that strat­e­gy, al­though many in­vestors ap­pear to have lost their pa­tience. The stock $CMPI, which de­buted at $15, now trades at $3.93.

No rea­son was giv­en for Labinger’s de­par­ture. Chair­man Mike Pow­ell wished him suc­cess in fu­ture en­deav­ors.

“Mr. Labinger’s res­ig­na­tion from the Board was not due to any dis­agree­ment with the Com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions, poli­cies or prac­tices,” the com­pa­ny wrote in a fil­ing.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”

As the ink dries on CSL’s $11.7 billion Vifor buyout, the company posted a dip in profits, due in part to a drop in plasma donations amid the pandemic.

However, CEO Paul Perreault assured investors and analysts on the full-year call that the team has left “no stone unturned” when assessing options to grow plasma volumes. The chief executive also spelled out positive results for the company’s monoclonal antibody garadacimab in hereditary angioedema (HAE), though he isn’t revealing the exact numbers just yet.

Irish drugmaker Endo International is entering into bankruptcy as it faces the weight of serious litigation related to its involvement in the opioid epidemic in the US.

The company has filed Chapter 11 proceedings in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, with the company expected to file recognition proceedings in Canada, the UK and Australia. The company’s bankruptcy filing showed the company had assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion.