Soon af­ter word got out about an FBI probe in­to uBio­me’s billing prac­tices, the mi­cro­bio­me test­ing start­up put its gen­er­al coun­sel in charge as the co-founders stepped aside from their roles as co-CEOs. John Rakow, the in­ter­im CEO, vowed to “co­op­er­ate ful­ly with gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties and pri­vate pay­ors to sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly re­solve the ques­tions that have been raised.”

John Rakow uBio­me

Turns out that was not good enough.

The San Fran­cis­co-based com­pa­ny is now in­stalling new lead­er­ship from the con­sult­ing firm Goldin As­so­ci­ates to re­place Rakow two months af­ter he was first ap­point­ed, the Wall Street Jour­nal re­port­ed. The new, in­ter­im man­age­ment team con­sists of CEO Cur­tis Solsvig, CFO Robin Chu and COO Karthik Bhavara­ju. The turn­around ex­perts from Goldin have been work­ing with uBio­me for the last month.

In ad­di­tion, Jes­si­ca Rich­man and Zach Apte — the co-founders — are turn­ing their sus­pen­sion to a full-on res­ig­na­tion from the com­pa­ny’s board, ac­cord­ing to an in­vestor let­ter re­viewed by the Jour­nal.

Rich­man and Apte launched uBio­me 6 years ago af­ter rais­ing $350,000 from a crowd­fund­ing cam­paign. It has since scored VC back­ing to­tal­ing $83 mil­lion from Y Com­bi­na­tor, An­dreessen Horowitz, 8VC and oth­ers as well as aca­d­e­m­ic part­ner­ships with the likes of UCSF and Har­vard. The biotech al­so boost­ed its pro­file by re­cruit­ing star di­rec­tors to its board, in­clud­ing ex-No­var­tis CEO Joe Jiminez, whom it said would con­tribute ex­per­tise for a piv­ot to the drug busi­ness.

Cur­tis Solsvig Goldin

The ex­ecs fol­lowed up their ini­tial con­sumer test, Ex­plor­er, with more tar­get­ed tests de­signed to eval­u­ate gut health, vagi­nal health and the mi­crobes that may be im­pli­cat­ed in pa­tients’ flu symp­toms. SmartGut and Smart­Jane were pulled from the mar­ket in May af­ter the FBI searched uBio­me’s of­fice — though the com­pa­ny didn’t spec­i­fy the rea­son.

In­sid­ers lat­er told the Jour­nal that in­sur­ers had large­ly stopped pay­ing for the tests as uBio­me was sus­pect­ed of us­ing im­prop­er billing codes and charg­ing for un­nec­es­sary tests.

The de­ci­sion to put new lead­ers in place re­port­ed­ly came from a spe­cial board com­mit­tee that was formed in the wake of the FDA raid to con­duct an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Though Decibel Therapeutics has largely pivoted toward gene therapies for the inner ear, its lead clinical candidate simply aims to protect cancer patients from chemotherapy-induced hearing loss. On Tuesday, the biotech presented its first efficacy data for the program, and execs like what they see.

Decibel reported interim results from a Phase Ib study showing the experimental drug, dubbed DB-020, largely protected a small group of patients from losing their hearing. Researchers used a particularly unique study design, administering the compound in one of each patients’ ears before they received cisplatin chemotherapy and placebo in the other.

In November, Pfizer disclosed it’s spun out the Phase II dual JAK1/TYK2 inhibitor to a startup formed in collaboration with an unnamed, experienced partner.

We now know who the partner is. And as Pfizer and Roivant officially take the wraps off Priovant Therapeutics, the companies reveal that they have started two registrational trials of the drug, brepocitinib, as part of a broader plan to develop a big, first-in-class franchise spanning multiple orphan and specialty autoimmune diseases.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.