For­mer Sanofi chief Olivi­er Brandi­court, who de­part­ed his post with an un­ex­pect­ed ear­ly re­tire­ment last year, has made his move — as most C-suite ex­ec­u­tives in­evitably do — to be­come a di­rec­tor on the board of a bio­phar­ma com­pa­ny.

RNAi play­er Al­ny­lam is Brandi­court’s des­ti­na­tion. Mean­while, the Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts-based drug­mak­er — which pi­o­neered the first ap­proval in the field — al­so dis­closed the re­tire­ment of Al­ny­lam co-founder Dr. Paul Schim­mel from its board.

Brandi­court, who served in lead­er­ship po­si­tions at Bay­er and Pfiz­er, took over the reins of the French drug­mak­er in 2015 — and was known for his qui­et, unas­sum­ing pres­ence.

At the time, Sanofi was al­ready strug­gling with the loss of patent pro­tec­tion on some of its key prod­ucts, among oth­er chal­lenges. Brandi­court im­ple­ment­ed a sweep­ing re­struc­tur­ing plan, cut­ting costs and jobs; bol­stered the com­pa­ny’s pres­ence in the lu­cra­tive rare dis­ease field with the buy­outs of Abl­ynx and Biover­a­tiv (al­though the com­pa­ny lost out on Medi­va­tion and Acte­lion); and swapped its an­i­mal health unit to take charge of Boehringer’s con­sumer health­care busi­ness.

His tenure was marred by the launch of the con­tro­ver­sial dengue vac­cine Deng­vax­ia in late 2015 — a few years fol­low­ing the launch, the com­pa­ny was forced to ad­mit the shot could cause more se­ri­ous in­fec­tions when ad­min­is­tered in peo­ple who haven’t ex­pe­ri­enced a pri­or in­fec­tion. Fol­low­ing a de­cline in sales in 2018, Brandi­court took a hefty pay cut — by 25% to €7.28 mil­lion ($8.2 mil­lion) — mak­ing him one of the low­est-paid big phar­ma CEOs, but Sanofi’s for­tunes didn’t quite perk up.

His suc­ces­sor, Paul Hud­son, in­her­it­ed a com­pa­ny with a slip­ping stock price, a di­a­betes arm large­ly in de­cline due to US pric­ing pres­sures and an R&D de­part­ment lag­ging be­hind its com­pa­tri­ots, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter some key hic­cups in on­col­o­gy.

Now, Brandi­court will grace the board of Al­ny­lam, fol­low­ing his mi­gra­tion to pri­vate eq­ui­ty. In De­cem­ber, he was ap­point­ed as a se­nior ad­vi­sor at Black­stone, which has ear­marked $4.5+ bil­lion for a life sci­ences fund.

A quick scan of the com­pen­sa­tion re­ceived by Al­ny­lam’s non-em­ploy­ee board mem­bers in 2018 sug­gests Brandi­court could earn be­tween $640,000 and $1.2 mil­lion in cash and stock op­tions.

The FDA hasn’t detected any potential safety signals, including for stroke, in people aged 65 years and older who have received Pfizer’s bivalent Covid booster, one senior official told members of the agency’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Thursday.

The update comes as the FDA and CDC investigate a “preliminary signal” that may indicate an increased risk of ischemic stroke in older Americans who received Pfizer’s updated shot.

The FDA has stopped use of another drug as a result of the new coronavirus variants. On Thursday, the agency announced that AstraZeneca’s antibody combo Evusheld, which was an important prevention option for many immunocompromised people and others, is no longer authorized.

The FDA said it made its decision based on the fact that Evusheld works on fewer than 10% of circulating variants.

Evusheld was initially given emergency authorization at the end of 2021. However, as Omicron emerged, so did studies that showed Evusheld might not work against the dominant Omicron strain. In October, the FDA warned healthcare providers that Evusheld was useless against the Omicron subvariant BA.4.6. It followed that up with another announcement earlier this month that it did not think Evusheld would work against the latest Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.

Contract manufacturer Abzena has permanently laid off 66 employees at one of its San Diego sites, marking the latest in a string of layoffs spanning the biotech industry.

The layoffs took effect on Jan. 11 at the company’s 8810 Rehco Road site, according to a WARN notice filed with the Employment Development Department of California.

Abzena does have another location in the San Diego area, where the manufacturer invested $60 million and added 50,000 square feet in 2020. Endpoints News reached out to Abzena but has not received a response as of press time.

Magenta Therapeutics is pausing an early-stage clinical trial after a patient died. The death was deemed to be possibly related to its drug, MGTA-117.

The biotech said the pause of the Phase I/II trial is voluntary and gives it time to review all available data before deciding what to do next. It’s also reported the known information to the FDA.

The dose-escalation trial was designed to test whether MGTA-117, an antibody-drug conjugate, could serve as a more targeted alternative to high-intensity chemotherapy as a conditioning agent for cancer patients who are set to receive a stem cell transplant. It recruited patients with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome.