When Ve­rastem part­ed ways with CEO Robert For­rester days ago, the board in­di­cat­ed that they would be look­ing for a suc­ces­sor with the com­mer­cial chops to bright­en up the fu­ture of its PI3K drug du­velis­ib.

Turns out they had a can­di­date right among them.

Bri­an Stug­lik — a di­rec­tor of two years — has now been in­stalled at the helm. The Eli Lil­ly vet be­gan tak­ing a strate­gic over­sight and ad­vi­so­ry role to Ve­rastem’s com­mer­cial group in May, the com­pa­ny added, in ad­di­tion to chair­ing the com­pen­sa­tion com­mit­tee.

Robert For­rester Ve­rastem

Through­out his time at the phar­ma gi­ant Stug­lik over­saw the trans­for­ma­tion of the port­fo­lio “from a sin­gle ap­proved prod­uct to a port­fo­lio of mar­ket­ed or late-stage com­pounds across more than 10 can­cer types” — a feat the Boston biotech clear­ly wants to repli­cate. His last role there was glob­al vice pres­i­dent and chief mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer in on­col­o­gy.

Lead di­rec­tor Michael Kauff­man — who al­so finds him­self man­ag­ing a new com­mer­cial op­er­a­tion as CEO of Karyopharm — praised Stug­lik’s track record of a “clear strate­gic vi­sion, fo­cused teams and ex­cel­lent ex­e­cu­tion.”

Dan Pa­ter­son will re­sume his COO po­si­tion af­ter 10 days in charge, while al­so tak­ing up new du­ties as pres­i­dent. CFO Rob Gagnon will dou­ble as the busi­ness de­vel­op­ment chief.

They form part of the ex­ec­u­tive team who Stug­lik will lead in carv­ing out a piece of the can­cer mar­ket for Copik­tra, which giv­en ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval last fall for third-line cas­es of fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma. The com­pa­ny says it’s stay­ing on track to gross about $10 mil­lion to $12 mil­lion in rev­enue from sales of the drug this year — not the kind of num­bers like­ly to trig­ger en­thu­si­asm in the boom­ing on­col­o­gy field.

Aside from the lead pro­gram, Ve­rastem is al­so work­ing on the in­hi­bi­tion of FAK, or fo­cal ad­he­sion ki­nase. De­fac­tinib is be­ing stud­ied as an add-on to check­points in pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, NSCLC, ovar­i­an can­cer and mesothe­lioma.

Ve­rastem $VSTM closed at $1.47 just be­fore the news came out, a deep plunge from its $10 peak last sum­mer and a fur­ther slide since For­rester de­part­ed. The mar­ket cap now sits at $105 mil­lion.

Eli Lilly has found a new chief commercial officer from among the ranks at Bristol Myers Squibb, as it says farewell to its longtime head of human resources Stephen Fry.

Fry announced on Thursday his plans to retire after more than 35 years with Lilly. He’ll vacate his seat as SVP of human resources and diversity at the end of the year, and current Loxo CCO Eric Dozier is slated to take his place. As a result, BMS’ Winselow Tucker is joining the team as Loxo CCO at the end of the month.

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.