Ear­li­er this week we asked our read­ers to chime in on a con­ver­sa­tion in­spired by for­mer NIH di­rec­tor and Sanofi R&D chief Elias Zer­houni, who was con­cerned that re­cent purges of Chi­nese Amer­i­can sci­en­tists at top bio­med­ical in­sti­tu­tions could spell trou­ble for the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. While ground­ed in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, he ar­gues, the US risks los­ing valu­able tal­ent and col­lab­o­ra­tions if it doesn’t han­dle the sit­u­a­tion prop­er­ly.

The re­sults to our snap poll, which gath­ered 220 re­spons­es, re­flects a lack of con­sen­sus on the three key ques­tions: How se­ri­ous is the prob­lem of aca­d­e­m­ic es­pi­onage? In try­ing to fix that is­sue, are we hurt­ing Chi­nese Amer­i­can sci­en­tists? And what, if any­thing, should be done about it?

More re­spon­dents be­lieve that wor­ries about aca­d­e­m­ic es­pi­onage are at least “some­what” well-found­ed, con­sti­tut­ing al­most 60%. On the oth­er side, 30% say “not re­al­ly” or “ab­solute­ly not,” with 10% stand­ing in the mid­dle.

“Ma­jor­i­ty of aca­d­e­m­ic find­ings are of no val­ue,” one read­er com­ments.

An­oth­er raised the con­cern that aca­d­e­mics don’t al­ways know where the line is be­tween friend­ly shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion and IP theft:

In­sti­tu­tions don’t al­ways train their fac­ul­ty and staff on ac­cept­able/un­ac­cept­able col­lab­o­ra­tion poli­cies, and there’s a fast-and-loose cul­ture in acad­e­mia on many top­ics (da­ta re­pro­ducibil­i­ty, HR, lab safe­ty, IP) that goes be­yond so-called aca­d­e­m­ic es­pi­onage.

But even for those con­cerned with some lev­el of es­pi­onage, there is a di­vide as to whether it’s a sys­temic ef­fort com­ing specif­i­cal­ly from Chi­na or bad ac­tors that are bound to pop up, re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty.

A slight ma­jor­i­ty agrees that the dis­missals at MD An­der­son and Emory threat­en the en­tire Chi­nese Amer­i­can sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty in the US — in par­tic­u­lar, the bio­med­ical re­search field, not least be­cause it shapes the pub­lic dis­course about sci­en­tists with roots in Chi­na.

Com­bine the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s an­ti-im­mi­grant stance with these re­cent events and even Amer­i­can born Chi­nese sci­en­tists like me feel threat­ened. It adds to a cli­mate of fear – who’s look­ing over our shoul­ders and mis­in­ter­pret­ing our ac­tions?

Those who hold the op­po­site view, though, say iso­lat­ed cas­es — in which in­di­vid­u­als were al­leged­ly pun­ished for shar­ing con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion and vi­o­lat­ing con­flict of in­ter­est poli­cies — don’t make a con­spir­a­cy against an en­tire eth­nic group.

Along the same lines, while 60% of re­spon­dents say they share an ur­gency to ad­dress the fears of Chi­nese Amer­i­can sci­en­tists, 20% do not and the rest are ei­ther neu­tral or haven’t formed an opin­ion.

Many in sup­port wor­ry about a re­verse brain drain, es­pe­cial­ly as they have had a pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing with Chi­nese-born col­leagues: “In the ab­sence of pos­i­tive in­for­ma­tion, in­di­vid­u­als will make there own de­ci­sions, and well-fund­ed Chi­nese com­pa­nies are push­ing hard for tal­ent al­ready.”

Oth­ers main­tain the prob­lem is overblown.

“It should be clear to all that there is noth­ing to be con­cerned about if sci­en­tists are not par­tic­i­pat­ing in ques­tion­able part­ner­ships with for­eign gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies or com­pa­nies, etc. It seems crazy to sug­gest that sci­en­tists who work with­in the nor­mal con­fines of acad­e­mia or in­dus­try would be at risk with­out ad­di­tion­al ac­tion.”

What about Zer­houni’s pro­pos­al to set up a blue-rib­bon com­mit­tee to draft a new set of clear­ly de­fined rules to gov­ern for­eign sci­en­tif­ic en­gage­ment?

The idea is clear­ly still in its in­fan­cy, with more than half re­spond­ing “neu­tral” or “no opin­ion” and some pro­fess­ing lack of un­der­stand­ing as to what that en­tails. Sup­port and dis­agree­ment are split right down the mid­dle.

Go­ing back to the ex­pul­sions that trig­gered the con­ver­sa­tion, a re­spon­dent sug­gests the so­lu­tion will be more in­for­ma­tion.

The best way for­ward is for the gov­ern­ment to spell out ex­act­ly what the ev­i­dence against these in­di­vid­u­als was. If it is con­vinc­ing to sci­en­tists that their in­ten­tions re­al­ly were to hurt Amer­i­can sci­ence and ben­e­fit Chi­nese, the ac­tions will be ac­cept­ed and will serve as a warn­ing to oth­ers per­haps con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar ad­ven­tures. On the oth­er hand, if the ev­i­dence is weak or they mis­in­ter­pret­ed the in­tent of the ac­tions of these peo­ple, then wide­spread pan­ic will en­sue, with or with­out a “blue rib­bon pan­el”.

So­cial im­age: Shut­ter­stock

Celgene’s business team isn’t waiting for the big merger with Bristol-Myers Squibb to go through before syncing its strategy with the new mother ship.

Tuesday evening the big biotech unveiled a $530 million deal — $50 million in upfront cash — to amend their alliance with Jounce Therapeutics $JNCE to gain worldwide rights to JTX-8064, an antibody that targets the LILRB2 receptor on macrophages. Their old, $2.6 billion deal is being scrapped, leaving Jounce with a pipeline that includes the lead drug, the ICOS-targeting vopratelimab.

At PACT Pharma, the lofty goal to unleash a “tsunami” of T cells personalized for each patient has hinged on the ability to correctly identify the neoantigens that form something of a fingerprint for each tumor, and extract the small group of T cells primed to attack the cancer. It still has a long way to go testing a treatment in humans, but the biotech says it has nailed that highly technical piece of the process.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Myovant $MYOV has closely matched its positive first round of Phase III data for their uterine fibroid drug relugolix, setting up a head-to-head rivalry with pharma giant AbbVie as the little biotech steers to the market with a planned filing in Q4.

Here’s how Myovant plans to prevail over the AbbVie $ABBV empire.

In the study, 71.2% of women receiving once-daily relugolix combination therapy achieved the clinical response they were looking for, compared to only 14.7% in the control arm. The data comfortably reflected the same outcomes in the first Phase III — 73.4% of women receiving once-daily oral relugolix combination therapy achieved the responder criteria compared with 18.9% of women receiving placebo — which will reassure regulators that they are getting the carefully randomized data that qualifies for the FDA’s gold standard for success.

The executive team at Sage $SAGE have skirted another potential pitfall on its way to racking up a big future for its depression drug Zulresso.

Little Marinus Pharmaceuticals $MRNS had sought to challenge the Sage drug with an IV formulation — followed by an oral version — of ganaxolone for postpartum depression. But researchers say their Phase II study failed to positively differentiate itself from a placebo at 28 days — leaving them to hold up “clinically meaningful” data within the first day of administration compared to the control arm.

Roche set out to make a better flu medicine than Tamiflu as that franchise was headed to a generic showdown. Now they’ll see just how well Xofluza stacks up against the mainstay drug after handing off over-the-counter rights in the US to Sanofi.

Sanofi $SNY says it will now step in to negotiate a deal with the FDA to steer Tamiflu into the OTC market, a role that could well involve new studies to ease passage of the drug out of doctor’s hands and into the consumer end of the market. And the French pharma giant will have first dibs over “selected” OTC markets around the world as they push ahead.

The nonprofit Bioethics International has come out with their latest scorecard on data transparency among the big biopharmas in the industry — flagging a few standouts while spotlighting some laggards who are continuing to underperform.

Now in its third year, the nonprofit created a new set of standards with Yale School of Medicine and Stanford Law School to evaluate the track record on trial registration, results reporting, publication and data-sharing practice.