Frank Clyburn left some big shoes to fill. Mer­ck an­nounced back in Feb­ru­ary that it would take three peo­ple to re­place his role run­ning the com­pa­ny’s hu­man health busi­ness, and tapped the first two ex­ecs from with­in.

For the third, Mer­ck is bring­ing home a sea­soned vet­er­an who spent 25 years at the phar­ma gi­ant be­fore leav­ing for a short stint at the helm of a Chi­nese biotech.

Joseph Ro­manel­li has agreed to lead Mer­ck’s in­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Health busi­ness, start­ing Aug. 1, the com­pa­ny an­nounced on Wednes­day. He’ll serve along­side Arpa Garay and Jan­nie Oost­huizen, two for­mer on­col­o­gy ex­ecs who now lead glob­al mar­ket­ing and US busi­ness for the Glob­al Health unit, re­spec­tive­ly.

All three will re­port di­rect­ly to CEO Robert Davis.

“Joe’s re­mark­able track record of dri­ving growth, un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to keep pa­tients at the cen­ter, deep knowl­edge of the glob­al com­pet­i­tive land­scape and pas­sion for Mer­ck’s pur­pose to save and im­prove lives make him the ide­al leader for our grow­ing and ex­pan­sive in­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Health busi­ness,” Davis said in a news re­lease.

It’s been less than a year since Ro­manel­li left Mer­ck to be­come CEO at Shang­hai-based JiX­ing Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

While there, he steered an ex­pan­sion of the com­pa­ny’s part­ner­ship with Cy­to­ki­net­ics to de­vel­op the lat­ter’s close­ly watched heart fail­ure drug ome­cam­tiv mecar­bil in Chi­na. In Feb­ru­ary, the drug failed to demon­strate an im­proved per­for­mance in ex­er­cise ca­pac­i­ty among pa­tients suf­fer­ing heart fail­ure with re­duced ejec­tion frac­tion when com­pared to a sug­ar pill.

Ro­manel­li al­so re­cent­ly led JiX­ing to a li­cens­ing deal with LENZ Ther­a­peu­tics for its two pres­by­opia can­di­dates.

The Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty Gabel­li School of Man­age­ment grad­u­ate an­nounced he was step­ping down from JiX­ing in April, and the com­pa­ny’s found­ing CEO, Pe­ter Fong, has agreed to step back up to take his place.

Be­fore that, Ro­manel­li served at Mer­ck for 25 years, start­ing as a busi­ness man­ag­er and work­ing his way up to man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of MSD Tai­wan, and even­tu­al­ly, pres­i­dent of MSD Chi­na. He led Mer­ck’s busi­ness in Chi­na from 2016 to 2021, dur­ing which time Chi­na be­came Mer­ck’s sec­ond-largest mar­ket, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny.

In his new role, Ro­manel­li will man­age Mer­ck’s $22 bil­lion in­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Health busi­ness and a team of 14,000 staffers.

Clyburn, who was once said to be in the run­ning for the CEO role at Mer­ck, stepped down from his po­si­tion as pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Health unit ear­li­er this year to be­come CEO at DuPont-ma­jor­i­ty owned In­ter­na­tion­al Fla­vors & Fra­grances (IFF).

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.”

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.