Philip Chase

A new era is un­fold­ing at Adimab.

Fif­teen years af­ter he co-found­ed the an­ti­body dis­cov­ery shop, Till­man Gern­gross is step­ping down as CEO — hand­ing the reins to Philip Chase, gen­er­al coun­sel. Step­ping away from day-to-day op­er­a­tions, the com­pa­ny not­ed he will now move to the strate­gic role of ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the board.

Er­ic Krauland

It’s the sec­ond de­par­ture for Gern­gross with­in the past few months. Back in Feb­ru­ary, the long­time Dart­mouth pro­fes­sor re­signed from the CEO post at Ada­gio, the Covid-fo­cused Adimab spin­out.

Over the decades, Gern­gross has built a rep­u­ta­tion as a pro­lif­ic in­ven­tor and se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur, with Adimab, which boasts of a dis­cov­ery plat­form based on en­gi­neered yeast, be­ing one of the best known be­cause of the high-pro­file part­ner­ships it’s in­spired with the likes of Boehringer In­gel­heim and In­novent (which gave birth to the Eli Lil­ly-part­nered, Chi­na-ap­proved PD-1 in­hibitor sin­til­imab).

“Adimab has been the crown jew­el of my pro­fes­sion­al and en­tre­pre­neur­ial en­deav­ors and I feel we have made a re­mark­able im­pact as a com­pa­ny,” he said in a state­ment. “I have the ut­most con­fi­dence in this lead­er­ship team, who has been ex­e­cut­ing to­geth­er for more than a decade, and I am proud to of­fer them this growth op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Chase will share his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties from the top with CSO Er­ic Krauland, who’s adding pres­i­dent to his ti­tle.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Celularity has warned “a substantial portion” of its employees that layoffs could be looming in the face of a reprioritization effort. In the same breath, it touted some of its very early next-gen candidates in degenerative diseases and oncology.

“While Celularity is hopeful that there will be no need to substantially reduce its headcount, the notifications were provided in accordance with applicable law and to maintain full transparency with its employees,” the news release reads, in part.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all current vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

The vote marks an effort to clear up confusion around varying formulations and dosing schedules for current primary series and booster vaccines, as well as “get closer to the strains that are circulating,” according to committee member Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.