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.

NIAID director Anthony Fauci gained hero status amid the pandemic, earning Americans’ trust and even Time magazine’s Guardian of the Year title. But he and other federal health officials have also faced intense threats, according to charges brought by the US Department of Justice.

A West Virginia man is facing up to 10 years in prison after threatening Fauci, former NIH director Francis Collins, and HHS assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine via email, the DOJ said on Monday. Thomas Patrick Connally, Jr., pleaded guilty on Monday to using an anonymous email address to threaten the officials for performing their official duties, including discussing Covid-19 testing and prevention.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals is making a name for itself, at least in terms of suing the FDA.

The DC-headquartered firm on Monday filed its latest suit against the agency, with the company raising concerns over the FDA’s failure to grant a fast track designation for Vanda’s potential chronic digestive disorder drug tradipitant, which is a neurokinin 1 receptor antagonist.

Specifically, Vanda said FDA’s “essential point” in its one-page denial letter on the designation pointed to “the lack of necessary safety data,” which was “inconsistent with the criteria for … Fast Track designation.”

A pivot into neoantigen immunotherapies was not enough to save Genocea Biosciences after all.

The 16-year-old biotech said it would be closing down and laying off all remaining employees “except those deemed necessary to complete an orderly wind down” of operations. It has also delivered a formal notice to Nasdaq, notifying the stock exchange of its intent to delist voluntarily.

The move comes a month after Genocea laid off 75% of its workforce and revealed it’s looking for strategic alternatives, such as a sale, merger or reverse merger. At the end of 2021, it had 74 employees.