Dan­ish der­ma­tol­ogy drug­mak­er Leo Phar­ma said it will split its R&D op­er­a­tions in­to two sep­a­rate teams.

The com­pa­ny had about 6,000 em­ploy­ees in ear­ly 2022 but, at the time, said it would elim­i­nate 1,000 po­si­tions in two years. Then, this Jan­u­ary, Leo said it would fur­ther re­duce head­count by about 300 po­si­tions in a re­hash­ing of its sourc­ing mod­el to em­pha­size ex­ter­nal help in find­ing orals, top­i­cals and bi­o­log­ics. Leo now says it em­ploys 4,700 peo­ple world­wide.

Ja­cob Pon­top­p­i­dan Thyssen

To lead the new­ly siloed units, Leo Phar­ma named Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen pro­fes­sor Ja­cob Pon­top­p­i­dan Thyssen as EVP and chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer. The com­pa­ny al­so said Jörg Möller would take on the in­ter­im role of EVP and de­vel­op­ment chief. With those two switch­es, VP of re­search and ear­ly de­vel­op­ment Thorsten Thor­mann will de­part af­ter al­most two decades with Leo.

“This change is about en­sur­ing co­her­ence and fo­cus from ear­ly to late-stage across the pipeline. We re­main com­mit­ted to the full de­vel­op­ment cy­cle and to a close col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Re­search and De­vel­op­ment,” CEO Christophe Bour­don said in a state­ment. He joined from Dan­ish biotech Or­p­hazyme last spring.

Leo has top­i­cals, mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies, an IL-17 small-mol­e­cule mod­u­la­tor and oth­er as­sets in the clin­ic for eczema, alope­cia, pso­ri­a­sis and oth­er in­di­ca­tions. The biotech’s late-stage work in­cludes three can­di­dates: tralok­inum­ab, del­go­c­i­tinib and an an­ti-IL-22R.

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

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.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.