The dam­age re­port from the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing’s chief physi­cian José Basel­ga keeps mount­ing.

Late on Fri­day came word from Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb that Basel­ga had re­signed from the big biotech’s board of di­rec­tors.

“Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb $BMY is com­mit­ted to the high­est stan­dards of ethics, com­pli­ance and in­tegri­ty,” not­ed the com­pa­ny in a brief state­ment. “These prin­ci­ples are cen­tral to the Com­pa­ny’s mis­sion and our abil­i­ty to de­liv­er in­no­v­a­tive med­i­cines to pa­tients with se­ri­ous dis­ease.”

Basel­ga had on­ly joined the board 5 months ago.

That res­ig­na­tion came sev­er­al days af­ter The New York Times and ProP­ub­li­ca re­port­ed that the renowned can­cer re­searcher had rou­tine­ly failed to fol­low the rules and cite his many fi­nan­cial ties with bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies in jour­nal ar­ti­cles and at con­fer­ences, forc­ing his ouster at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing.

Late Thurs­day word spread that the ar­ti­cle had set off a storm of con­tro­ver­sy, trig­ger­ing a chain re­ac­tion of alarm at MSK that prompt­ed the sci­en­tist to turn in his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion. In it, he wrote:

I fear my con­tin­ued role lead­ing clin­i­cal care and re­search will be­come too much of a dis­trac­tion to the hos­pi­tal and its re­mark­able team of physi­cians, re­searchers and staff.

Basel­ga, the once high­ly sought af­ter physi­cian-in-chief at MSK, al­so ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for his fail­ures to dis­close his many ties to phar­ma and biotech com­pa­nies, adding that those links were al­so well known and care­ful­ly re­port­ed to MSK it­self.

The news trig­gered a fren­zy of com­ments on Twit­ter, with a mix of views on the sud­den down­fall of a wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed re­searcher. If noth­ing else, it will put a spot­light on the grow­ing fi­nan­cial con­nec­tions be­tween re­searchers and the in­dus­try — and like­ly trig­ger a rush to fill in any gaps on dis­clo­sures in the com­ing weeks.

Quite a few peo­ple felt that forc­ing Basel­ga out at MSK was ex­ces­sive. But it’s al­so clear that prop­er­ly re­port­ing these ties is a se­ri­ous con­cern for the in­dus­try. We put up a poll for peo­ple at the be­gin­ning of the week, and drew more than a few harsh re­bukes for what he had failed to do.

Out of 447 re­spons­es, 330 — 74% — felt his fail­ure to re­port fi­nan­cial ties was a sig­nif­i­cant is­sue. On­ly 26% felt it was not. Sig­nif­i­cant, though, meant dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. 

Here’s a sam­pling of the com­ments we heard:

Im­age: José Basel­ga. AS­CO

After spending years developing its oral formulation of the corticosteroid budesonide, Sweden’s Calliditas now has its sights set on the primary biliary cholangitis field.

The company will buy out France-based Genkyotex, and it’s willing to bet up to €87 million ($102 million) that Genkyotex’s failed Phase II drug, GKT831, will do better in late-stage trials.

Under the current agreement, Calliditas $CALT will initially pay €20.3 million in cash for 62.7% of Genkyotex (or €2.80 a piece for 7,236,515 shares) in early October, then circle back for the rest of Genkyotex’s shares under the same terms. If nothing changes, the whole buyout will cost Calliditas €32.3 million, plus up to  €55 million in contingent rights.

CanSino began the year with a clear goal to secure a secondary listing on Shanghai’s STAR market. Then something more urgent came along: As a rising vaccine developer on a mission to bring global standard immunizations to China, it heeded the call to make a vaccine to protect against a virus that would paralyze the whole world.

Xuefeng Yu and his team managed to keep doing both.

More than a month after CanSino’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate is authorized for military use in China, the Hong Kong-listed company has made a roaring debut in Shanghai. It fetched $748 million (RMB$5.2 billion) by floating 24.8 million shares, and soared 88% on its first trading day.