Fac­ing hun­dreds of law­suits over its role in fu­el­ing the US opi­oid epi­dem­ic, Pur­due Phar­ma is in the midst of full-scale tear­down — but that doesn’t mean its for­mer lead­ers aren’t mak­ing off well. Com­ing off a stint dri­ving RNAi ther­a­py in­clisir­an to a buy­out, for­mer Pur­due CEO Mark Tim­ney has found a new home at the helm of a small biotech.

On Mon­day, At­tralus Ther­a­peu­tics an­nounced Tim­ney’s hire as CEO amid a flur­ry of ad­di­tions to the biotech’s brain trust.

As the CEO dri­ving Pur­due dur­ing some of the worst years of the opi­oid epi­dem­ic, Tim­ney has been named in dozens of law­suits against the Oxy­Con­tin mak­er. He joined The Med­i­cines Com­pa­ny as its CEO in De­cem­ber 2018 af­ter four years as the pres­i­dent and CEO of Pur­due. In 2019, he snagged an $84 mil­lion wind­fall when that com­pa­ny was bought by No­var­tis for $9.7 bil­lion.

In a state­ment, Tim­ney said that he was ex­cit­ed about At­tralus’ pan-amy­loid re­moval ther­a­pies for pa­tients with sys­temic amy­loi­do­sis, cit­ing the ex­ten­sive un­met needs sur­round­ing the dis­ease. Nei­ther he nor At­tralus men­tioned any­thing about his time at Pur­due in the press re­lease, ex­cept for a brief men­tion that he held a se­nior role there.

The state­ment tout­ed his years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­dus­try and his lead­er­ship of The Med­i­cines Com­pa­ny through late-stage clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and max­i­mized the po­ten­tial for in­clisir­an, a siR­NA cho­les­terol low­er­ing ther­a­py.

“These ac­tions in­creased share­hold­er re­turn more than three-fold with­in one year and cul­mi­nat­ed in the com­pa­ny’s ac­qui­si­tion by No­var­tis,” the state­ment said.

Dur­ing his time at Pur­due, Tim­ney al­leged­ly di­rect­ed sales reps to pro­mote Oxy­Con­tin’s “abuse-de­ter­rent prop­er­ties,” even though he didn’t dis­close that those prop­er­ties didn’t help with over­con­sump­tion of the drug, the AP said. Tim­ney and his pre­de­ces­sor John Stew­art were ac­cused of par­tic­i­pat­ing di­rect­ly in de­cep­tive prac­tices and al­leged­ly gave pre­sen­ta­tions that ac­knowl­edged that the an­ti-abuse tech­nol­o­gy was un­like­ly to work. He is named as a de­fen­dant in more than 30 law­suits against Pur­due from over 1,000 cities and states, in­clud­ing Col­orado, Mass­a­chu­setts and Con­necti­cut.

Richard Gaster

So far, Pur­due has reached a num­ber of set­tle­ments, in­clud­ing one in March 2019 for $270 mil­lion with the state of Ok­la­homa. The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly mired in a court-su­per­vised re­struc­tur­ing.

Nei­ther At­tralus nor Tim­ney re­spond­ed by press time.

“We are pleased to wel­come Mark Tim­ney as CEO of At­tralus, as he brings a track record for de­liv­er­ing val­ue for pa­tients, health care sys­tems and in­vestors,” At­tralus board mem­ber Richard Gaster said in the re­lease.

Rahul Kakkar, a biotech en­tre­pre­neur and the CEO of Pan­dion Ther­a­peu­tics be­fore it was ac­quired by Mer­ck, was named as an At­tralus board mem­ber Mon­day. Gre­go­ry Bell comes to the com­pa­ny to fill the role of CMO from KAI Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Glen Fire­stone was named the CBO, Kr­ish­na Gor­ti was named the head of cor­po­rate de­vel­op­ment and Michael Klein was named the head of chem­istry, man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­trols.

At­tralus’ pan-amy­loid re­moval ther­a­peu­tic is de­signed to di­rect­ly bind and re­move tox­ic amy­loid in or­gans and tis­sues, and has the po­ten­tial to treat pa­tients with all types and stages of amy­loi­do­sis.

The FDA late Friday awarded Boehringer Ingelheim the first interchangeability designation for its Humira biosimilar Cyltezo, meaning that when it launches in July 2023, pharmacists will be able to automatically substitute the Boehringer’s version for AbbVie’s mega-blockbuster without a doctor’s input.

The designation will likely give Boehringer, which first won approval for Cyltezo in 2017, the leg up on a crowded field of Humira competitors.

Esperion’s executive team spent years insisting that they had found the sweet spot in the market for their cholesterol drug. But that strategy has soured badly, and after struggling to sell its heart disease pill for more than a year, the biotech says it will cut about 40% of its staff over the next few weeks.

The layoffs will take place across the board, from sales and marketing to R&D, CEO Sheldon Koenig told Endpoints News on Monday. While the chief executive declined to elaborate on how many employees will be affected, an SEC filing stated that approximately 170 staffers are on the chopping block.

Largely known for its nonpeptide small molecule research, Crinetics has been keeping its radiopharma work comparatively under wraps. But that changed Monday afternoon as the California biotech spun out a new company focused solely on the burgeoning field.

Crinetics launched Radionetics after the closing bell Monday, the company announced, seeding the new entity with $30 million raised from 5AM Ventures and Frazier Healthcare Partners. Radionetics will start with its own radiopharma-centric platform and a pipeline of 10 programs aimed at solid tumors.