David Hung earned his spurs as a mas­ter deal­mak­er in biotech, blaz­ing through a string of ma­jor part­ner­ships for good (and bad) drugs be­fore sell­ing Medi­va­tion at auc­tion for a whop­ping $14 bil­lion. Now he’s back, join­ing hands with one of the bright­est fi­nan­cial en­gi­neers in the busi­ness, as CEO of Vivek Ra­maswamy’s Ax­o­vant.

Ra­maswamy turned heads and raised more than a few eye­brows when he snagged a failed Alzheimer’s drug from Glax­o­SmithK­line for $5 mil­lion up­front and then made it the cen­tral fea­ture in a record-set­ting biotech IPO for Ax­o­vant $AX­ON. Since then, Ra­maswamy has been wheel­ing and deal­ing him­self, set­ting up more com­pa­nies as well as an­oth­er IPO for My­ovant.

Vivek Ra­maswamy

Through­out, he has spe­cial­ized in re­cruit­ing some very high-pro­file ex­ecs to run his com­pa­nies. And you don’t get much high­er pro­file than Hung.

Said Ra­maswamy:

We were not search­ing for a new CEO at Ax­o­vant, but fol­low­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of Medi­va­tion I ap­proached David about tak­ing a role with us af­ter the MIND­SET study. David de­cid­ed that he want­ed to join us now. I have en­joyed a close pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al re­la­tion­ship with David over the last ten years, and I am tru­ly thrilled that Ax­o­vant is in ca­pa­ble hands as I tran­si­tion full-time to my role as CEO of Roivant.

In­vestors loved it. The news drove up Ax­o­vant’s shares by 29%, adding sev­er­al hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars to its mar­ket cap.

Mar­i­on Mc­Court

Iron­i­cal­ly, the for­mer Medi­va­tion CEO is head­ed back to a field where he ex­pe­ri­enced his biggest, most em­bar­rass­ing set­back. Pfiz­er paid $225 mil­lion up­front to part­ner with Hung on Dime­bon, an an­ti­his­t­a­mine that turned out to be an aw­ful fail­ure in try­ing to blunt the progress of the mem­o­ry-steal­ing dis­ease.

Hung isn’t ar­riv­ing at Ax­o­vant alone; he’s bring­ing a small crew along. Mar­i­on Mc­Court, the for­mer COO at Medi­va­tion, is tak­ing the same job at Ax­o­vant. And two close as­so­ciates of Hung, Kathryn “Kate” E. Fal­berg and William An­tho­ny “Tony” Ver­non, are join­ing an ex­pand­ed board. They al­so were board mem­bers at Medi­va­tion.

Ax­o­vant is look­ing to a set of pos­i­tive da­ta that GSK had gath­ered for its 5HT6 drug for symp­toms of Alzheimer’s. While oth­ers like Pfiz­er and Lund­beck have failed, Ax­o­vant be­lieves that by tak­ing the suc­cess­ful dose back in­to the clin­ic, it can suc­ceed where every oth­er late-stage study over the past 14 years has failed.

That’s a tall or­der, but a num­ber of very se­ri­ous play­ers in the in­dus­try tell me that the com­pa­ny has a de­cent shot at suc­ceed­ing — though its drug will like­ly do lit­tle but de­lay the crush­ing dis­ease by some months. Right now, that looks like ma­jor progress.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.