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 succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Celularity has warned “a substantial portion” of its employees that layoffs could be looming in the face of a reprioritization effort. In the same breath, it touted some of its very early next-gen candidates in degenerative diseases and oncology.

“While Celularity is hopeful that there will be no need to substantially reduce its headcount, the notifications were provided in accordance with applicable law and to maintain full transparency with its employees,” the news release reads, in part.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all current vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

The vote marks an effort to clear up confusion around varying formulations and dosing schedules for current primary series and booster vaccines, as well as “get closer to the strains that are circulating,” according to committee member Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.