Stephen Hahn’s nom­i­na­tion as the new com­mis­sion­er of the FDA was de­liv­ered right on sched­ule Fri­day, with the clock tick­ing down on the No­vem­ber 1 dead­line Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump faced in find­ing a per­ma­nent re­place­ment for Scott Got­tlieb. The pend­ing news had be­come the worst kept se­cret in Wash­ing­ton. But the full mean­ing of the move is still un­de­ter­mined.

The Chief Med­ical Ex­ec­u­tive at MD An­der­son had a rep for steer­ing straight in­to con­fronta­tion, when the fu­ture of the in­sti­tu­tion was at stake. More prob­lem­at­ic, per­haps, will be his role in dis­miss­ing Chi­nese re­searchers at a time the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has been bear­ing down on the Asian gi­ant. Just how Hahn will man­age drug de­vel­op­ment, which is my pri­ma­ry are­na of in­ter­est, is go­ing to take some time to fig­ure out.

In­ter­im chief Ned Sharp­less was the clear in­sti­tu­tion­al fa­vorite for get­ting the job full time af­ter a stint at the NCI. Pa­tient groups loved him and the in­dus­try deeply re­spect­ed his ex­per­tise, even if he nev­er gen­er­at­ed the kind of en­thu­si­asm Scott Got­tlieb achieved at the agency’s helm as the first com­mis­sion­er with re­al celebri­ty sta­tus.

As the process to con­firm Dr. Hahn be­gins, I will re­turn to @theN­CI to re­sume my role as @NCIDi­rec­tor. I am con­fi­dent Dr. Hahn will pro­vide strong lead­er­ship for the FDA. https://t.co/3vc­syj7Pf4

— Dr. Ned Sharp­less (@FDA­Com­mis­sion­er) No­vem­ber 1, 2019

Hahn’s nom­i­na­tion, though, won’t trig­ger any ob­vi­ous back­lash in bio­phar­ma. As a re­spect­ed ex­ec­u­tive at MD An­der­son with a track record in re­search and a ca­reer in on­col­o­gy that ex­tend­ed back through a stint at the pres­ti­gious Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia’s Perel­man School of Med­i­cine, he’ll be ex­pect­ed to main­tain the gold stan­dard in drug de­vel­op­ment.

Mar­garet Foti, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of AACR, set the tone with a pre­pared com­ment for the oc­ca­sion:

Dr. Hahn, who is board cer­ti­fied in both ra­di­a­tion and med­ical on­col­o­gy, is es­teemed for the breadth and depth of his sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and ex­per­tise, and he has con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for a drug re­view process at the FDA that is both sci­ence-di­rect­ed and pa­tient-fo­cused.

The ques­tion is whether he’ll keep push­ing the en­ve­lope on greater reg­u­la­to­ry flex­i­bil­i­ty that has helped rev­o­lu­tion­ize can­cer drug de­vel­op­ment and changed the dy­nam­ics of R&D.

That’s some­thing no one seems to know much about. But they’ll get a chance to hear much more once the Sen­ate picks up the nom­i­na­tion.

David Livingston, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Med scientist who helped shine a light on some of the key molecular drivers of breast and ovarian cancer, died unexpectedly last Sunday.

One of the senior leaders at Dana-Farber during his nearly half century of work there, Livingston was credited with shedding light on the genes that regulate cell growth, with insights into inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that helped lay the scientific foundation for targeted therapies and earlier detection that have transformed the field.

Just as Avoro Capital’s campaign to derail Merck’s proposed $11.5 billion buyout of Acceleron gains steam, Bristol Myers Squibb is leaning in with some hefty counterweight.

The pharma giant is planning to tender its Acceleron shares, Bloomberg reported, which add up to a sizable 11.5% stake. Based on the offer price, the sale would net Bristol Myers around $1.3 billion.

To complete its deal, Merck needs a majority of shareholders to agree to sell their shares.

When Beth Hogan, a metastatic pancreatic cancer patient, showed up for her infusion at Yale’s Smilow Cancer Hospital in New Haven, CT on Oct. 11, she said she was informed that day that she would not be receiving Bristol Myers Squibb’s Abraxane, part of her combo treatment, because of a shortage.

“I was told we don’t know when you can have it,” she told Endpoints News via email, adding that she doesn’t expect to receive any Abraxane this coming Monday at her treatment appointment either, and she doesn’t know when things will change.

A federal court found Eli Lilly in breach of a royalty agreement with an Arizona company, likely sending the case — which deals with Lilly’s blockbuster diabetes drugs — to a trial.

The Arizona District Court ordered Lilly to pay the royalties to Tucson, AZ-based Research Corporation Technologies, per an opinion delivered Tuesday, stemming from a 1990 agreement involving materials used in manufacturing Lilly’s insulin products. Lilly had agreed to pay a 2% royalty on worldwide sales, and the exact amount of damages will be determined in a trial, Judge Scott Rash wrote.