Two months af­ter Leg­end Biotech made the star­tling dis­clo­sure that founder and then-CEO Frank Zhang was placed un­der “res­i­den­tial sur­veil­lance,” its par­ent com­pa­ny re­vealed that he’s been for­mal­ly ar­rest­ed.

Zhang — who, since found­ing Gen­Script 18 years ago, has tak­en the CRO pub­lic and groomed Leg­end Biotech in-house un­til the J&J-part­nered CAR-T play­er was ma­ture enough for its own Nas­daq list­ing — is sev­er­ing his fi­nal ties with both. He is re­sign­ing as board chair/non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Gen­Script and di­rec­tor of Leg­end.

The cir­cum­stances around the cus­toms in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the ar­rest re­main opaque.

But the com­pa­nies are ready to move on. Gen­Script has in­stalled Meng Jiange, its VP of in­vestor re­la­tions, as the chair, while adding for­mer chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer Zhu Li and Wang Xue­hai, VP of the Chi­na Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal En­ter­pris­es As­so­ci­a­tion, to the board. Zhu is al­so join­ing Leg­end’s board.

“While no charges have been filed against him, Dr. Zhang de­cid­ed that to avoid un­nec­es­sary dis­trac­tion to Leg­end Biotech, his res­ig­na­tion would be in the in­ter­ests of Leg­end Biotech and its share­hold­ers,” a state­ment from Leg­end read.

In an HKEX fil­ing, Gen­Script re­port­ed it had learned about his ar­rest on Fri­day from a fam­i­ly mem­ber who sent over “a copy of a no­tice of ar­rest is­sued by (the) Cus­toms An­ti-Smug­gling De­part­ment of Zhen­jiang” dat­ed Nov. 20. The sus­pect­ed of­fense had to do with “smug­gling goods pro­hib­it­ed by the im­port and ex­port reg­u­la­tions un­der the laws of the PRC.”

Two oth­er em­ploy­ees who had han­dled im­port and ex­port ac­tiv­i­ties have al­so been ar­rest­ed, it wrote. There was no word on what the goods might be.

Jef­feries an­a­lyst Biren Amin has pre­vi­ous­ly sug­gest­ed, based on a chat with Leg­end, that the po­ten­tial vi­o­la­tion sur­round­ed Gen­Script’s ex­port of blood and ge­net­ic sam­ples out of Chi­na.

With a crit­i­cal fil­ing for its BC­MA CAR-T cell ther­a­py loom­ing, Leg­end shares $LEGN fell 4.84% pre-mar­ket.

Ying Huang, the for­mer CFO, is now over­see­ing all that as CEO while Gen­Script co-founder Sal­ly Wang serves as board chair­woman.

In the same way that the FDA signs off on flu vaccines every year without requiring large clinical trials to measure their efficacy, the FDA may employ a similar strategy in authorizing variant-focused versions of the mRNA vaccines.

As the world braces for more data on the latest variant Omicron, which may reduce vaccine efficacy, top vaccine developers like Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have promised they can pull together a new vaccine targeted against a specific Covid variant in about 100 days. Since Omicron emerged last week, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and J&J have all said they’ve begun work on Omicron-specific vaccines, if needed.

Dutch VC Forbion is hopping on the ever-lengthening SPAC train.

To be led by Jasper Bos, who joined Forbion Growth as a general partner back in May just after the fund closed at $428 million, Forbion European Acquisition will target late-stage opportunities in the life sciences industry in Europe to merge with and bring onto Nasdaq.

Cyril Lesser, senior controller at Forbion, will be the CFO while Bos serves as CEO.