It’s been less than a month since sex­u­al ha­rass­ment al­le­ga­tions forced promi­nent biotech founder and re­searcher David Saba­ti­ni to re­sign from his tenured spot at MIT. Now, re­ports have emerged that he could soon wind up at an­oth­er no­table uni­ver­si­ty.

The New York Uni­ver­si­ty Gross­man School of Med­i­cine is con­sid­er­ing bring­ing Saba­ti­ni on­to its fac­ul­ty, ac­cord­ing to a re­port out Mon­day from Sci­en­ceIn­sid­er. 

“Dr. Saba­ti­ni’s work and sci­en­tif­ic ac­com­plish­ments are wide­ly rec­og­nized, and any de­ci­sion about a po­ten­tial role at NYU Gross­man School of Med­i­cine would be sub­ject to care­ful and ex­ten­sive due dili­gence and con­sul­ta­tion with a broad group of stake­hold­ers,” NYU said in a state­ment emailed to End­points News. 

Saba­ti­ni stepped down from MIT in the first week of April, fol­low­ing an ex­ter­nal probe that found he vi­o­lat­ed the sex­u­al ha­rass­ment poli­cies of MIT’s White­head In­sti­tute. He had pre­vi­ous­ly been oust­ed from the White­head, but wait­ed to leave MIT al­to­geth­er.

“Pro­fes­sor Saba­ti­ni en­gaged in a sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship with a per­son over whom he held a ca­reer-in­flu­enc­ing role, he did not dis­close the re­la­tion­ship at any time to his su­per­vi­sors, and he failed to take any steps to re­lin­quish his men­tor­ing and ca­reer-in­flu­enc­ing roles, as the pol­i­cy re­quires,” MIT pres­i­dent L. Rafael Reif wrote in an open let­ter ear­li­er this month.

The out­side probe in­to Saba­ti­ni’s con­duct was prompt­ed by a March 2021 sur­vey as­sess­ing the in­sti­tute’s cul­ture, which “iden­ti­fied is­sues of par­tic­u­lar con­cern in the Saba­ti­ni lab,” White­head di­rec­tor Ruth Lehmann said at the time.

NYU fac­ul­ty and oth­ers in the in­dus­try have spo­ken out against the re­ports, in­clud­ing in Twit­ter posts.

“To say that I am dis­ap­point­ed in@nyu­lan­gone@nyu­gross­man is a vast un­der­state­ment. Fac­ul­ty and stu­dents there are speak­ing up to voice their op­po­si­tion, and I hope they raise their voic­es and are heard by the school’s lead­er­ship,” wrote Ni­na Gray, an as­sis­tant vice provost for re­search plan­ning and analy­sis at NYU.

To say that I am dis­ap­point­ed in @nyu­lan­gone @nyu­gross­man is a vast un­der­state­ment. Fac­ul­ty and stu­dents there are speak­ing up to voice their op­po­si­tion, and I hope they raise their voic­es and are heard by the school’s lead­er­ship. https://t.co/XuO­ClJ8pLk

— Dr. Ni­na Gray (@neu­ron­i­na) April 26, 2022

Anne Car­pen­ter, a sci­en­tist at the Broad In­sti­tute of Har­vard and MIT, wrote on Twit­ter that she de­clined last week to sign a let­ter of­fer­ing sup­port for Saba­ti­ni, or­ga­nized by cur­rent and for­mer lab mem­bers.

Last week I was in­vit­ed to sign a let­ter of­fer­ing sup­port for David Saba­ti­ni, or­ga­nized by cur­rent & for­mer lab mem­bers. Uni­ver­si­ties con­sid­er­ing hir­ing him have asked for this.
I will not sign.

There was no op­tion to pro­vide a more nu­anced re­sponse, so I will elab­o­rate here 🧵

— Anne Car­pen­ter, PhD (@DrAn­neCar­pen­ter) April 10, 2022

“Uni­ver­si­ties con­sid­er­ing hir­ing him have asked for this. I will not sign,” she wrote. “I just have to won­der how a sup­port­ive let­ter signed by some lab mem­bers is rel­e­vant, in light of 3 in­sti­tu­tions con­clud­ing poli­cies were bro­ken, and in the ab­sence of any route for dis­sent­ing lab mem­bers to pro­vide in­put.”

Oth­ers have drawn con­nec­tions be­tween the Saba­ti­ni fam­i­ly and NYU, where his fa­ther, David D. Saba­ti­ni, spent more than 40 years as chair of NYU’s cell bi­ol­o­gy de­part­ment.

Re­minder that his fa­ther is emer­i­tus at the NYU school of med­i­cine (which he chaired 1972-2011)…

(Al­so for RU folks — re­minder that his fa­ther did his PhD at R*ck­e­feller & then be­came fac­ul­ty here + mul­ti­ple fac­ul­ty/staff were trained in their labs.) https://t.co/Jw1wr5tV5e

— Stephanie Mar­cus (@stephjoy_mar­cus) April 26, 2022

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis made a name for himself in the 2020 election cycle as the darling of the pharma industry, accepting hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions, even from the likes of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Those contributions have led Tillis to attempt to re-write patent laws in pharma’s favor, a move which failed to gain steam in 2019, and request for a third time since January that the FDA should help stop “the false narrative that patent protections are to blame for high drug prices.”