→ Af­ter it was an­nounced last week, in a sur­prise twist, that Akcea pres­i­dent Sarah Boyce along with her two top ex­ec col­leagues, CEO Paula Soteropou­los and COO Jef­frey Gold­berg were hit­ting the ex­it at the Io­n­is spin­off, Boyce has found a new home. Boyce has been tapped to the helm of Avid­i­ty Bio­sciences — a com­pa­ny pi­o­neer­ing an­ti­body-oligonu­cleotide con­ju­gates (AOCs) — as their new CEO, pres­i­dent and board mem­ber. Boyce will draw from ex­pe­ri­ence from her pre­vi­ous stints at Io­n­is, For­est Lab­o­ra­to­ries, Alex­ion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, No­var­tis On­col­o­gy and Roche.

→ El­e­vate­Bio — the cell and gene ther­a­py um­brel­la com­pa­ny run by for­mer Alex­ion chief David Hal­lal — on Tues­day un­veiled the launch of High­Pass­Bio, which is fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing T-cell im­munother­a­pies. The start­up’s lead ex­per­i­men­tal prod­uct, de­vel­oped by re­searchers at Fred Hutchin­son Can­cer Re­search Cen­ter, is en­gi­neered to treat and po­ten­tial­ly pre­vent re­lapse of leukemia fol­low­ing hematopoi­et­ic stem cell trans­plant. The ther­a­py is cur­rent­ly in ear­ly-stage de­vel­op­ment.

→ A lit­tle af­ter Astel­las se­cured ap­proval for Rox­adust, which was co-de­vel­oped with Fi­bro­Gen, in Japan for pa­tients with chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease, the Tokyo-based com­pa­ny is now in­vest­ing $12.5 mil­lion in­to two in­no­va­tion in­cu­ba­tors op­er­at­ed by Lab­Cen­tral — a US-based lab­o­ra­to­ry fa­cil­i­ty for biotech star­tups fo­cused on cell and gene ther­a­pies.

The in­vest­ment will make Astel­las “the on­ly phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal/biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny among five Found­ing Spon­sors of a new in­cu­ba­tor, which will fea­ture a core lab space where com­pa­nies can eas­i­ly con­duct process de­vel­op­ment stud­ies and a non-GMP pi­lot plant, be­ing de­vel­oped by Lab­Cen­tral” in Cam­bridge. The new in­cu­ba­tor is ex­pect­ed to be op­er­a­tional in 2021.

In ad­di­tion, Astel­las will in­vest at least $450,000 over three years to be­come a Gold Spon­sor of Lab­Cen­tral’s ex­ist­ing in­cu­ba­tor lo­cat­ed in Cam­bridge.

The firehose of biopharma news is gushing these days.

That’s why broader and deeper is the theme for 2021 at Endpoints. You can expect new coverage outside our core R&D focus, with deeper reporting in some key areas. When John Carroll and I launched Endpoints nearly five years ago, we were wading in waist-high waters. Now we’re a team of 25 full-time staffers (and growing) with plans to cover the flood of biopharma news, Endpoints-style.

Eli Lilly’s $1.04 billion takeover of Prevail Therapeutics is officially complete, the company announced Friday.

The sides had entered into the buyout agreement last month with Lilly focusing on Prevail’s pipeline of gene therapies, highlighting two AAV9 programs in Parkinson’s disease and frontotemporal dementia as potential winners. Lilly paid $22.50 per share, which amounted to an 82% premium over the previous day’s closing price and a 117% premium over Prevail’s 60-day average.

It’s time for a new FDA commissioner to come on board, a rite of passage for Joe Biden’s administration that should help seal the new president’s rep on seeking out the experts to lead the government over the next 4 years.

As of now, the competition for the top job appears to have narrowed down to 2 people: The longtime CDER chief Janet Woodcock and Joshua Sharfstein, the former principal deputy at the FDA under Peggy Hamburg. Both were appointed by Barack Obama.