Al­most four years af­ter Genen­tech first pub­licly ac­cused a for­mer top sci­en­tist of steal­ing trade se­crets, she’s been sen­tenced to six months in prison.

Xan­the Lam and her hus­band, Allen Lam, were both hand­ed the same sen­tence of six months’ im­pris­on­ment and $10,000 in fines. Their dead­line for vol­un­tary sur­ren­der will be next April, as they aren’t cur­rent­ly in cus­tody.

A 30-year vet­er­an at the biotech, Xan­the Lam was work­ing full-time as a prin­ci­pal sci­en­tist when Racho Jor­danov and Rose Lin, the CEO and COO of Tai­wan’s JHL Biotech, ap­proached her for in­sid­er in­for­ma­tion about the Roche sub­sidiary’s block­buster can­cer drugs. JHL was look­ing to de­vel­op biosim­i­lars to those drugs, and Lam’s se­nior role gave her ac­cess to a trove of con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments and files that she then turned over to JHL.

Those in­clude de­tailed doc­u­ments like stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures used in reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ings. At one point, pros­e­cu­tors al­lege that JHL em­ploy­ees draft­ed around 90 dif­fer­ent SOPs us­ing Genen­tech’s ma­te­r­i­al, some­times sim­ply copy­ing and past­ing or re­mov­ing the Genen­tech lo­go.

In or­der to keep the il­lic­it scheme from Genen­tech, she com­mu­ni­cat­ed with JHL em­ploy­ees and re­ceived pay­ment through Allen Lam.

The trade se­crets of­fered a short­cut, Genen­tech ar­gued, for JHL to de­vel­op biosim­i­lars at an “as­ton­ish­ing” pace for a start­up, rack­ing up mil­lions of dol­lars of in­vest­ment and scor­ing a part­ner­ship with Sanofi — while en­rich­ing the founders.

Jor­danov and Lin have pre­vi­ous­ly plead­ed guilty to both steal­ing trade se­crets and ly­ing to in­vestors. They were sen­tenced to one year and a day.

As for the Lams, who al­so plead­ed guilty, they will be sub­ject to three years of su­per­vised re­lease up­on the end of their prison term.

The sen­tenc­ing or­der was filed last week at the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court for the North­ern Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia and en­tered over the week­end.

The FDA has rejected Incyte’s extended-release formulation of ruxolitinib tablets, in a surprise setback for the company’s plans to build on its blockbuster Jakafi franchise.

The ruxolitinib XR tablets are designed to be taken once a day, whereas Jakafi is indicated for twice daily dosage (although some patients can take it once daily).

According to Incyte, the FDA acknowledged in its complete response letter that the study submitted in the NDA “met its objective of bioequivalence based on area under the curve (AUC) parameters but identified additional requirements for approval.”

The European Commission has once again delayed the release of its proposal for an overhaul of the continent’s pharmaceutical legislation.

The release, previously anticipated on March 29, will occur “slightly later” than expected due to the “very busy College agendas of the last few weeks,” a Commission spokesperson told Endpoints News via email.

While the agency hasn’t provided an updated timeline, the spokesperson said the agenda is “always indicative and adoption dates of Commission proposals may change any time, especially when these proposals concern reforms of complex legislations of major importance.”

A small, Santa Ana-based biotech created in 2017 is looking to enter a SPAC deal as it lays out plans to begin trials in its lead cell therapy candidates and bring on new executives.

Graf Acquisition Corp. IV and NKGen Biotech announced Thursday, with few other details, that the two companies signed a non-binding letter of intent to “pursue a business combination.” Graf Acquisition II and III withdrew their IPOs last year.

Cyclerion Therapeutics may have the design of a Phase IIb study ready to go, but it’s scrambling for a way to fund it.

The company said in a press release that it’s “actively evaluating the best combination of capital, capabilities, and transactions available to it to advance the development of zagociguat,” its lead candidate for a rare, genetic mitochondrial disease known as MELAS.

In a separate SEC filing, Cyclerion once again flagged “substantial doubt about (its) ability to continue as a going concern.” As of the end of 2022, it had cash and cash equivalents of only $13.4 million.