Rough­ly two hours af­ter Pfiz­er named its new CFO, its Covid-19 vac­cine com­peti­tor Mod­er­na chalked up its own new CFO with a ré­sumé steeped in health­care, den­tal equip­ment and au­to man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Mod­er­na’s cur­rent CFO, David Meline, “has de­cid­ed to re­tire,” the Spike­vax mak­er said Mon­day as Jorge Gomez takes over the com­pa­ny’s fi­nances on May 9. For 21 months, Meline led the fi­nan­cial du­ties at the Flag­ship-found­ed biotech dur­ing its mas­sive rise as one of the key play­ers in the world’s pan­dem­ic re­sponse. He’ll re­main as a con­sul­tant for the tran­si­tion.

David Meline

Gomez comes to the Cam­bridge, MA biotech with re­cent chops in lead­ing the fi­nances of den­tal equip­ment mak­er Dentsply Sirona, which he joined in Au­gust 2019. He ap­pears to have just a week­end break be­tween jobs: Dentsply said he de­parts May 6.

Dur­ing his tenure at Dentsply, the $10.5 bil­lion mar­ket cap com­pa­ny’s stock $XRAY went on a ride from $52 per share to a low of $38, up to $67.51 last April and back down to $48 to­day.

He’ll join a biotech with a mar­ket cap mag­ni­tudes larg­er, at $63.6 bil­lion, thanks large­ly to Mod­er­na’s suc­cess at de­liv­er­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es and work build­ing up part­ner­ships across the globe with the likes of IAVI, fed­er­al gov­ern­ments and in­dus­try peers As­traZeneca, Mer­ck and Ver­tex.

Stéphane Ban­cel

“As we grow and scale the com­pa­ny glob­al­ly, Jorge’s ex­pe­ri­ence lead­ing the fi­nan­cial func­tions of multi­na­tion­al health­care com­pa­nies will be an as­set to our team. Jorge’s pas­sion for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG aligns close­ly with Mod­er­na’s vi­sion to make cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty a crit­i­cal part of who we are and what we do,” Mod­er­na CEO Stéphane Ban­cel said in the news re­lease. Mod­er­na’s ESG day is slat­ed for Nov. 10, the com­pa­ny said in Feb­ru­ary.

Gomez steps in­to a 3,000 em­ploy­ee-com­pa­ny with $17.6 bil­lion in cash, cash equiv­a­lents and in­vest­ments at the end of 2021.

Like Pfiz­er’s new CFO, Lowe’s fi­nance chief David Den­ton, Gomez’s ré­sumé has a re­cent gap in phar­ma work. Pri­or to the den­tal equip­ment mak­er, Gomez was CFO for near­ly two years at Car­di­nal Health. Dur­ing his near­ly 14-year ca­reer at Car­di­nal, Gomez worked up to the top CFO post af­ter serv­ing as CFO of the med­ical seg­ment from 2015 to 2017 and fi­nance chief of the phar­ma seg­ment from 2012 to 2015.

Be­fore join­ing Car­di­nal Health in 2006, he was in var­i­ous po­si­tions at Gen­er­al Mo­tors — across New York, Sin­ga­pore, Bel­gium and Brazil — for the pre­ced­ing nine years.

Gomez is al­so on the boards of wa­ter tech­nol­o­gy provider Xylem and video game ther­a­peu­tics mak­er Pear Ther­a­peu­tics.

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.

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.

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.”

The FDA today approved Emergent BioSolutions’ Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter sales. The nod was expected and comes on the heels of a unanimous 19-0 advisory committee vote in favor of approval last month.

The move to OTC means the opioid overdose reversal agent will now be available on grocery, convenience and gas stations shelves, as well as potentially for purchase online.