The ac­tivist at­tack launched at Zio­pharm On­col­o­gy $ZIOP that turned in­to an ug­ly and bit­ter pub­lic feud has come to a con­clu­sion.

Two of the three board nom­i­nees put forth by 3.3% mi­nor­i­ty in­vestor Wa­ter­Mill As­set Man­age­ment Corp. will be join­ing Zio­pharm’s board af­ter re­ceiv­ing the nec­es­sary 50%+ votes from share­hold­ers, Wa­ter­Mill said Thurs­day morn­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a ma­jor­i­ty of Zio­pharm share­hold­ers vot­ed to re­call chair­man Scott Tar­riff, the firm said.

No­tably, Wa­ter­Mill founder Robert Post­ma, who first ini­ti­at­ed the at­tack in ear­ly No­vem­ber, is not join­ing the board de­spite al­so gain­ing enough sup­port from in­vestors, Wa­ter­Mill said. Zio­pharm’s board is capped at eight mem­bers and had pre­vi­ous­ly stood at sev­en pri­or to the vot­ing dead­line, al­low­ing for on­ly the two who re­ceived high­er vote shares to join with Tar­riff’s re­moval.

In ear­ly No­vem­ber, Wa­ter­Mill be­gan its at­tack seek­ing to re­place three board mem­bers and Tar­riff with three in­di­vid­u­als: Post­ma, Jaime Vieser and Hol­ger Weis. Two mem­bers of the board tar­get­ed by Wa­ter­Mill re­signed in the fol­low­ing weeks and one still re­mains.

“We wel­come Messrs. Vieser and Weis as the newest mem­bers of Zio­pharm’s Board of Di­rec­tors,” Zio­pharm said in a state­ment. “We al­so wish to thank Scott Tar­riff, a mem­ber of the Board since 2015 and Chair­man since 2018, for the nu­mer­ous pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions and tire­less com­mit­ment to the pa­tients we hope to serve.”

Full re­sults of the vote will not be avail­able un­til Zio­pharm files an up­date with the SEC, and the tim­ing of the 8-K re­mains un­clear, a com­pa­ny spokesman told End­points News. Zio­pharm de­clined to com­ment on the vote and the sta­tus of Post­ma’s po­si­tion be­yond its press re­lease.

In a state­ment, Post­ma said that Vieser and Weis “are ful­ly com­mit­ted to putting this con­test be­hind them and im­me­di­ate­ly help­ing the Board chart the right path for­ward.” He lat­er added:

While we an­tic­i­pate that many sup­port­ive share­hold­ers will be dis­ap­point­ed that our full slate is not join­ing the Board at this time, Wa­ter­Mill is con­struc­tive­ly en­gag­ing with Zio­pharm to try to en­sure that the mes­sage sent by a crit­i­cal mass of in­vestors is re­spect­ed. Wa­ter­Mill re­mains com­mit­ted to al­ways do­ing what is best for Zio­pharm.

It’s not yet clear if Wa­ter­Mill will con­tin­ue push­ing for the last in­di­vid­ual to step down and be re­placed with Post­ma, or if that ac­tion falls un­der what Post­ma says is “best” for the com­pa­ny.

Though the mi­nor­i­ty in­vestor of­fi­cial­ly be­gan its at­tack in ear­ly No­vem­ber, the Zio­pharm brouha­ha had stemmed from months of sim­mer­ing feel­ings over the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tion. Wa­ter­Mill and oth­er in­vestors had raised ob­jec­tions over a for­mer board mem­ber at Zio­pharm’s an­nu­al meet­ing over the sum­mer, and that in­di­vid­ual was re­placed in Sep­tem­ber.

Then the board re­place­ment bid be­gan, with Wa­ter­Mill seek­ing the as­cen­sion of all three of Post­ma, Vieser and Weis in or­der to tru­ly right the ship. At the time the at­tack be­gan, Zio­pharm shares were down rough­ly 50% since the start of 2020, with Wa­ter­Mill claim­ing the board as then con­sti­tut­ed re­spond­ed to com­plaints with “clear dis­dain” and in­stalled the oust­ed board mem­ber’s boss, de­spite say­ing they’d hire an out­side firm to con­duct a search.

Things on­ly got ugli­er from there, with Zio­pharm at­tempt­ing to paint one of Wa­ter­Mill’s nom­i­nees — Weis — as unique­ly un­qual­i­fied to serve on the board. The com­pa­ny cit­ed pub­lic bank­rupt­cy fil­ings from the biotech De­meRx in 2018, which Zio­pharm said showed Weis’ his­to­ry of cor­po­rate mal­prac­tice.

Wa­ter­Mill coun­tered by say­ing Zio­pharm was en­gag­ing in a “des­per­ate, low-road smear cam­paign,” cit­ing state­ments from two for­mer De­meRx ex­ec­u­tives who vouched for Weis. Though Zio­pharm’s board saw heavy churn over the last six months, Tar­riff and CEO Lau­rence Coop­er had not re­placed any of the de­part­ing mem­bers with Wa­ter­Mill nom­i­nees.

Zio­pharm’s share prices have not ful­ly re­cov­ered since a pa­tient died in a gene ther­a­py study back in 2016 af­ter de­vel­op­ing an in­tracra­nial he­m­or­rhage 15 days af­ter start­ing treat­ment. The death was deemed to be un­re­lat­ed to the treat­ment.

Then in 2018, Zio­pharm was forced to hit the brakes on a CAR-T ther­a­py when the FDA placed a clin­i­cal hold on its Phase I study of a treat­ment that could be built in 2 days to ex­press CD-19, IL-15 and a safe­ty switch for CD-19/pos­i­tive leukemias and lym­phomas. Ear­li­er this year, though, Zio­pharm saw some ear­ly, pos­i­tive over­all sur­vival da­ta for their con­trolled IL-12 treat­ment in glioblas­toma. The com­pa­ny is al­so look­ing at com­bin­ing that ex­per­i­men­tal drug with Re­gen­eron’s Lib­tayo.

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) last year sought to find ways to better coordinate large-scale clinical trials in the US — as the UK lead by example during the pandemic — especially for these emergency clinical trials.

The lobbying group PhRMA Tuesday called for more clinical trial diversity in underserved areas, including by making participation less of a burden, and expanding eligibility criteria when appropriate.

The FDA on Tuesday released a warning letter sent earlier this month to the Mason, OH-based site of Procter & Gamble Manufactura, raising questions about the list of ingredients on the label and in the electronic filing.

The warning says that for P&G’s over-the-counter Vicks Nyquil Severe Hot Remedy Cold and Flu Plus Congestion, there’s a “mismatched” list of active ingredients between the labeling and the electronic listing file. The listing file for the active ingredients did not match the active ingredients in the electronic file.