Now that Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has drug his heels as long as pos­si­ble in se­lect­ing a new FDA com­mis­sion­er, we’re set to wel­come the new boss — same as the old boss.

Janet Wood­cock, whose pub­lic lega­cy may now boil down to the ap­proval of an un­proven Alzheimer’s drug and whose in­dus­try lega­cy cen­ters on putting the agency in sync with the largest drug de­vel­op­ers, is set to step aside as Robert Califf makes his way back to the helm. And the in­dus­try large­ly ap­pears to think that’s just fine.

We asked our read­ers what they thought about the move — which Wash­ing­ton in­sid­ers be­lieve is large­ly a slam dunk giv­en the last vote in Califf’s fa­vor. And 58% of­fered a quick and em­phat­ic thumbs up. True, right at 1 in four were not hap­py about the move. But with an­oth­er 18% lined up among the un­de­cid­eds, it’s clear he won’t face much if any crit­i­cism from in­sid­ers, who most­ly like him fine.

Califf, notes one sup­port­er, “knows what he is do­ing. FDA is in a good place and does not need rein­vent­ing. He will have to avoid Bio­gen like is­sues, but that is not hard.”

A key mo­ment in his past ex­pe­ri­ence run­ning the FDA oc­curred when Califf let Wood­cock move ahead with her con­tro­ver­sial OK for Sarep­ta’s still ex­per­i­men­tal Duchenne MD drug. Af­ter de­lay­ing the start of its con­fir­ma­to­ry tri­al, Sarep­ta will need more than 9 years to see through its post-ap­proval study. Bio­gen al­so gets 9 years. And no one is look­ing for the FDA to make things much hard­er for the av­er­age drug de­vel­op­er.

Califf will al­ways look a lit­tle lack­lus­ter com­pared to Scott Got­tlieb, a dy­nam­ic com­mish who al­so helped spot­light the re­volv­ing door be­tween the FDA and in­dus­try by leap­ing straight to Pfiz­er’s board. Califf is jump­ing in from Ver­i­ly. But he got his aca­d­e­m­ic cred at Duke, and he gets a lot of sup­port for that alone.

— He’s the clear best op­tion among some not-great can­di­dates (aside from Scott Got­tlieb, who ap­par­ent­ly was not in­ter­est­ed in the job).

“We need an FDA head and there isn’t any­one else who seems bet­ter,” notes an­oth­er read­er.

Oth­ers find that hard to be­lieve.

— This is a crit­i­cal time in the FDA’s fu­ture and it is time for new blood.

“Too close­ly con­nect­ed to in­dus­try and cur­rent gov­ern­ment,” writes an­oth­er in a com­ment re­peat­ed­ly echoed among the crit­ics.

That in­sid­er knowl­edge, though, can cut both ways with this crowd.

— Prag­mat­ic leader with an ex­cel­lent un­der­stand­ing of the clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment process and a true com­mit­ment to in­no­va­tion for pa­tients that im­prove pa­tient out­comes.

— Thought­ful, ded­i­cat­ed, great per­spec­tive, trained as a clin­i­cian and clin­i­cal re­searcher, so he sees the field of ther­a­peu­tic de­vel­op­ment from a won­der­ful per­spec­tive. Cares about peo­ple and pub­lic health, does not view him­self as a “reg­u­la­tor”. He has all the right skills to lead FDA back to a trust­ed po­si­tion of lead­er­ship and pub­lic ser­vice in these fraught times of pub­lic opin­ion.

But the praise was large­ly mut­ed:

— Good enough con­sid­er­ing the al­ter­na­tives.

At this point, just mak­ing a choice and clear­ing up any un­cer­tain­ty will be re­as­sur­ing to a large seg­ment of in­dus­try lead­ers. And what­ev­er Janet Wood­cock does next, her dom­i­nant spir­it will con­tin­ue to in­flu­ence events at the FDA.

Almost exactly two years after its debut at the 2020 JP Morgan confab — and on the heels of a new partnership with the gene editing experts at Intellia — a Gilead-backed, autoimmune disease-focused startup has returned to the well with a clearer outline of just what it plans to do with its CAR-T platform.

Kyverna brought in $85 million in its oversubscribed Series B, the company announced Wednesday. Northpond Ventures led the round, and Westlake Village BioPartners, Vida Ventures, Gilead and Intellia all contributed as well.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying so hard to politicize the FDA and demonize the federal government that he entered into an alternate universe on Monday evening in describing a recent FDA action to restrict the use of two monoclonal antibody, or mAb, treatments for Covid-19 that don’t work against Omicron.

Without further ado, let’s break down his statement from last night, line by line, adjective by adjective.