New Merck CFO Caroline Litchfield (Merck)

Mer­ck­'s big C-suite shuf­fle con­tin­ues as Car­o­line Litch­field is tapped as new CFO

It’s out with the old in Mer­ck’s C-suite, as CEO Ken Fra­zier pre­pares to hand the reins to CFO Robert Davis. To fill that spot, the phar­ma gi­ant is bring­ing up its cur­rent trea­sur­er, who’s been at the com­pa­ny for more than three decades.

Car­o­line Litch­field will take the CFO spot start­ing April 1, Mer­ck said on Wednes­day. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter grad­u­ate got her start in fi­nance at the com­pa­ny’s UK site back in 1990, and hopped to Ger­many, Switzer­land and the US to fill a va­ri­ety of roles span­ning “every as­pect of fi­nance,” ac­cord­ing to her LinkedIn page.

From 2014 to 2018, Litch­field led fi­nance for Hu­man Health, Mer­ck’s largest busi­ness, be­fore get­ting pro­mot­ed to trea­sur­er.

“Car­o­line’s ap­point­ment as our next CFO is the re­sult of a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors – most im­por­tant­ly, Car­o­line’s fi­nan­cial ex­per­tise, re­mark­able track record, and lead­er­ship – as well as our com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing tal­ent and our suc­ces­sion plan­ning for lead­er­ship roles,” out­go­ing CEO Ken Fra­zier said in a state­ment.

The news comes just a week af­ter Mike Nal­ly an­nounced he’s step­ping away from the chief mar­ket­ing job at the phar­ma gi­ant to pur­sue an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty. Fra­zier’s hit­ting the ex­it in June, and R&D MVP Roger Perl­mut­ter shared news of his re­tire­ment at the end of last year.

In Feb­ru­ary, Mer­ck ap­point­ed Davis, a four-year Mer­ck vet­er­an with a dec­o­rat­ed ré­sumé, to take Fra­zier’s role. He’s served time as EVP of glob­al ser­vices and CFO at Bax­ter and 14 years in the ranks at Eli Lil­ly.

The fresh C-suite will be tasked with lead­ing Mer­ck to the next big Keytru­da with­out Fra­zier and Perl­mut­ter, who’s hand­ed the reins to cur­rent dis­cov­ery lead Dean Li. Perl­mut­ter plans to stay on in a non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor role through mid-2021.

“I’m hon­ored to be­come Mer­ck’s CFO at such a piv­otal time, and to work close­ly with Ken, Rob and the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee to con­tin­ue our com­pa­ny’s tru­ly unique lega­cy of sav­ing and im­prov­ing lives and cre­at­ing long-term val­ue for pa­tients, cus­tomers and share­hold­ers,” Litch­field said in a pre­pared state­ment.

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Roger Perl­mut­ter lines up deals, fresh fund­ing at Eikon; Sec­ond RSV vac­cine ap­proved; Sev­er­al biotechs flash­ing red; and more

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

As you come back to our website this weekend for ASCO news, don’t forget to check out our updated event lineup at BIO, which will cover everything from the current state of VC investing in biotech to top pharma R&D chiefs discussing how to make pipeline decisions.

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Peter van de Sande, Synaffix CEO

Lon­za shells out $107M cash to snap up Synaf­fix and its ADC plat­form

After lining up a string of partnerships over the years, Dutch antibody-drug conjugate specialist Synaffix has found a new home: Lonza, the contract development and manufacturing giant.

Lonza is paying about $107 million (€100 million) in cash to acquire Synaffix, with up to $64 million (€60 million) in “additional performance-based consideration” on the table. Synaffix’s ADC tech platform will now become part of Lonza’s offering for biopharma clients, lending its bioconjugate technologies to not just ADCs but also targeted gene therapy, immune cell engagers and other applications.

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Full TIG­IT da­ta from Gilead, Ar­cus show low­er PFS rates than De­cem­ber read­out: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Gilead and Arcus unveiled a fuller snapshot of a Phase II study testing their experimental cancer immunotherapy combo that showed lower progression-free survival rates than its previous update, results that are likely to spark further debate over the closely-watched clinical trial.

Last December, the anti-TIGIT/anti-PD-L1 combo, positioned as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, recorded data that drew mixed reactions. The latest analysis, presented Saturday afternoon at ASCO, included only a handful more patients than the previous update, but PFS rates fell — in one cohort by nearly three months.

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Bris­tol My­er­s' Op­di­vo keeps can­cer at bay in more lym­phoma pa­tients than Seagen's Ad­cetris in PhI­II: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — In a study pitting Seagen’s Adcetris against Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo in newly diagnosed patients with advanced classic Hodgkin lymphoma, a greater proportion of those who received Opdivo saw no cancer growth at one year compared to those who got Adcetris.

In addition, patients in the Opdivo arm of the Phase III trial reported reduced toxicities, according to lead investigator Alex Herrera, a hematologist-oncologist at City of Hope’s cancer cancer in Duarte, CA. Notably, the trial included more than 200 children across both arms. Generally, more than half of children with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma receive radiation therapy, but in this trial, dubbed SWOG S1826, only a handful of patients in the two arms received radiotherapy, sparing many children from long-term side effects of radiation.

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Servi­er’s vo­rasi­denib stalls pro­gres­sion of brain can­cer by 61% in piv­otal PhI­II IN­DI­GO study: #AS­CO23

An experimental pill from Servier Pharmaceuticals showed potentially practice-changing results in a narrow group of brain cancer patients, cutting the risk of their cancers progressing by 61%, according to a late-stage clinical trial.

The drug, vorasidenib, is a precision medicine that only works in certain people whose cancer carries mutations in one of two genes called IDH1/2. Doctors hope that the therapy will delay the need for chemotherapy or radiation, which are often used to combat relapses in patients who’ve previously undergone surgery to remove brain tumors.

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Stephen MacMillan, Hologic CEO (Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

Il­lu­mi­na names Ho­log­ic CEO as new board mem­ber and chair

Illumina’s board appointed two new members, including Hologic CEO Stephen MacMillan as the non-executive chair, a move that followed a proxy fight that saw shareholders oust the company’s board chair.

The DNA sequencing company also appointed Scott Ullem, the CFO of Edwards Lifesciences, to the board, according to a company statement.

Illumina’s plans to add two new board members came as Carl Icahn waged a board proxy campaign culminating with shareholders electing his candidate, Andrew Teno, over board chair John Thompson. Illumina CEO Francis deSouza survived a threat to his board seat by securing more than twice the shareholder votes than his challenger. Another Illumina candidate, Robert Epstein, was also elected and remained on the board.

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Catal­ent makes ad­di­tion­al lay­offs at In­di­ana fa­cil­i­ty

Contract manufacturer Catalent is making more staff cuts at one of its locations in the US amid dramatic corrective actions it’s been taking over the past few months.

In an email to Endpoints News, a Catalent spokesperson confirmed the company is making “a number of personnel changes” at a manufacturing facility in Bloomington, IN. While a specific number was not given to Endpoints, several local media outlets, including Indiana Public Media and the Bloomington Herald-Times, have put the number of layoffs at 150. No postings have been made to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development’s WARN notice.

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As­traZeneca tri­al shows mod­est ben­e­fit in ovar­i­an can­cer, but doc­tors say it's hard to ap­ply find­ings: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Adding AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi and Lynparza to the treatment regimen for patients with advanced ovarian cancer and no BRCA mutation extended progression-free survival (PFS) by five months, according to interim data released at the ASCO annual meeting Saturday morning.

However, the design of the Phase III study obscures how much Imfinzi is contributing to the PFS extension, doctors said, making it difficult to apply the findings to clinical practice.

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