Af­ter a down year, bio­phar­ma writ large is look­ing for a breath of fresh air — and now the winds of change have hit on­col­o­gy bis­pecifics play­er Zymeworks.

Ken Gal­braith

Ali Tehrani, a co-founder of Zymeworks who has been the biotech’s CEO since 2003, has re­signed from his po­si­tion and will be re­placed by Ken Gal­braith, a se­r­i­al biotech en­tre­pre­neur and for­mer board mem­ber, the com­pa­ny said Wednes­day.

Tehrani will take on an ad­vi­so­ry role with the com­pa­ny once his tenure for­mal­ly ends Feb. 1 to help aid in the tran­si­tion for Gal­braith’s lead­er­ship turn. Mean­while, board chair Lota Zoth will be moved in­to an in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tor role in con­junc­tion with the shake­up.

Shares in $ZYME were trad­ing down around 7% on the news ear­ly Thurs­day.

In both a press re­lease and con­cur­rent SEC fil­ing, Zymeworks re­leased no fur­ther de­tails on the rea­sons for Tehrani’s de­par­ture. He and his com­pa­ny came to terms on a sev­er­ance deal that will in­clude a $889,683 lump sum pay­ment as well as a re­main­ing an­nu­al bonus and ben­e­fits. His ad­vi­so­ry con­tract is set to end in Sep­tem­ber 2023.

Mean­while, Gal­braith will take the reins at a biotech that has been gung-ho in its ef­forts to rein in a suite of Big Phar­ma part­ners and re­cent­ly flashed some promis­ing da­ta for its bis­pe­cif­ic HER2-tar­get­ed an­ti­body, dubbed zanidatam­ab, at this year’s ES­MO.

Gal­braith has float­ed in and out of biotech lead­er­ship roles for years, most re­cent­ly serv­ing as ex­ec­u­tive-in-res­i­dence at Syn­cona since April and as a man­ag­ing part­ner at Five Cor­ners Cap­i­tal, which he co­found­ed back in 2013. Oth­er stops on his lengthy ré­sumé in­clude CEO of Lim­i­nal Bio­Sciences be­tween April 2019 and No­vem­ber 2020, CEO of Fairhaven Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals from June 2017 to April 2019, and even as a Zymeworks board mem­ber from 2009 to 2013.

Gal­braith had this to say about his ap­point­ment:

I have long be­lieved in the po­ten­tial of in­no­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms to gen­er­ate nov­el mul­ti­spe­cif­ic an­ti­bod­ies and an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates and trans­form the treat­ment of can­cer. Zymeworks’ in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach, tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms and emerg­ing prod­uct pipeline rep­re­sent a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty, and I look for­ward to lead­ing the Com­pa­ny dur­ing this ex­cit­ing pe­ri­od of in­no­va­tion in can­cer ther­a­pies. This year, we ex­pect to progress our two on­go­ing piv­otal clin­i­cal stud­ies for zanidatam­ab, present im­por­tant new da­ta for zanidatam­ab and ZW49 to in­form ad­di­tion­al clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, fur­ther ad­vance our pre­clin­i­cal prod­uct pipeline and gain in­sights from our phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal part­ners’ pro­grams as they ad­vance in­to and through clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

Gal­braith will be due a $600,000 an­nu­al salary plus stocks and op­tions, with the op­tion for an an­nu­al bonus worth up to 60% of that salary fig­ure.

Eli Lilly has found a new chief commercial officer from among the ranks at Bristol Myers Squibb, as it says farewell to its longtime head of human resources Stephen Fry.

Fry announced on Thursday his plans to retire after more than 35 years with Lilly. He’ll vacate his seat as SVP of human resources and diversity at the end of the year, and current Loxo CCO Eric Dozier is slated to take his place. As a result, BMS’ Winselow Tucker is joining the team as Loxo CCO at the end of the month.

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.