The MiMedx saga — which has in­clud­ed a months-long in­ves­ti­ga­tion, FBI in­volve­ment and al­le­ga­tions that the com­pa­ny fraud­u­lent­ly boost­ed its sales — has re­sult­ed in the con­vic­tion of two for­mer ex­ec­u­tives. But it isn’t quite over yet.

Park­er “Pe­te” Pe­tit

For­mer CEO Park­er “Pe­te” Pe­tit and for­mer COO William Tay­lor have been con­vict­ed on a se­cu­ri­ties fraud count and a con­spir­a­cy count, re­spec­tive­ly, in the South­ern Dis­trict Court of New York. The Man­hat­tan US at­tor­ney’s of­fice ac­cused the men of false­ly re­port­ing $9.5 mil­lion of rev­enue in 2015 to boost the com­pa­ny’s stock and fill their own pig­gy banks, per a Law360 re­port.

But the de­fen­dants have de­nied the ac­cu­sa­tions, and say they plan on ap­peal­ing the ver­dict. Pe­tit was ac­quit­ted on a  con­spir­a­cy count, while Tay­lor was ac­quit­ted on a fraud count.

William “Bill” Tay­lor

“We are pleased that the ju­ry ac­quit­ted Mr. Tay­lor of se­cu­ri­ties fraud. We are of course dis­ap­point­ed in the ver­dict on the con­spir­a­cy count, but Mr. Tay­lor ful­ly in­tends to seek to have the ver­dict over­turned,” Tay­lor’s lawyer William Bur­ck told Law360.

MiMedx $MDXG, which pro­duces sur­gi­cal and tis­sue-graft prod­ucts for vet­er­ans and mil­i­tary hos­pi­tals, ran in­to trou­ble back in Feb­ru­ary of 2018, when the FBI showed up at the door of Marc Co­hodes. The vo­cal short sell­er had in­sult­ed the com­pa­ny and Pe­tit in hun­dreds of tweets. Af­ter FBI agents or­dered Co­hodes to stop, his lawyer went to the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice with a com­plaint.

The DOJ seemed to be al­ready in­ves­ti­gat­ing MiMedx’s sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion prac­tices. The com­pa­ny faced law­suits brought by ex-em­ploy­ees who ac­cused it of fraud­u­lent­ly boost­ing sales. And it spent sev­er­al years chal­leng­ing the FDA on whether its prod­ucts met reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards.

MiMedx said it was con­duct­ing an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in Feb­ru­ary of 2018, and that it would re­state its fi­nan­cial state­ments go­ing back six years. It part­ed ways with Pe­tit and Tay­lor and slashed 24% of its work­force to start a “new chap­ter.” By No­vem­ber, it delist­ed from Nas­daq.

The in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, con­duct­ed by King & Spald­ing with KP­MG as an au­di­tor, turned up a slew of ac­cu­sa­tions, in­clud­ing that MiMedx made ma­te­r­i­al mis­state­ments and omis­sions about its deals, that Pe­tit lied un­der oath when dis­cussing its largest dis­trib­u­tor, and that the com­pa­ny’s ac­tions were “de­signed to ma­nip­u­late the tim­ing and recog­ni­tion of rev­enue.”

The com­pa­ny’s shares, which once trad­ed at a high of $16.75, closed at $6.79 apiece on Thurs­day.

What comes next for the for­mer ex­ecs? Pe­tit is sched­uled for sen­tenc­ing on Feb 23, and Tay­lor is due back the fol­low­ing day. Pe­tit could be look­ing at up to 20 years for the se­cu­ri­ties fraud count, while Tay­lor’s con­spir­a­cy count could land him up to 5 years.

A cor­rec­tion has been made to re­flect that Pe­tit was ac­quit­ted on a con­spir­a­cy count, not a se­cu­ri­ties fraud count.

Belgian biotech Confo Therapeutics has landed $183 million, plus potential royalties, in a drug-discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo.

Early Thursday, Confo Therapeutics put out word of the deal that will be focused on small molecule antagonists to go after an undisclosed target that the company says is associated with CNS diseases.

Confo CEO Cedric Ververken told Endpoints News that Daiichi originally reached out to learn about the biotech’s technology. He added that Confo, founded in 2015, will use its platform to drug a GPCR target that Daiichi has struggled with internally.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”