The C-suite mu­si­cal chairs re­ver­ber­at­ing through biotech the last few months con­tin­ued Tues­day af­ter­noon with an­oth­er small cap com­pa­ny an­nounc­ing a tran­si­tion at the top.

Long­time Aque­s­tive Ther­a­peu­tics CEO Kei­th Kendall will leave the com­pa­ny ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, the biotech an­nounced late Tues­day, bring­ing an end to his sev­en-and-a-half year tenure. Kendall will re­main a con­sul­tant through the end of the year and be re­placed by Daniel Bar­ber, the com­pa­ny’s COO since May 2019, on a per­ma­nent ba­sis.

Aque­s­tive did not an­nounce a rea­son for the change, on­ly say­ing the move was “un­re­lat­ed to the Com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy, op­er­a­tions, fi­nan­cial con­di­tion, re­port­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults, in­ter­nal con­trols or dis­clo­sure con­trols and pro­ce­dures.”

Much like the rest of the sec­tor, Aque­s­tive has fall­en on hard times dur­ing the cur­rent bear mar­ket, as its stock $AQST is down more than 70% since the start of 2020. It’s a slide that’s con­tin­ued for most of its pub­lic trad­ing life as well, with Aque­s­tive shares down about 90% from its IPO price back in 2018.

The biotech’s most re­cent strug­gles stem from an oft-trou­bled drug ap­pli­ca­tion for oral film to treat seizures. Orig­i­nal­ly sub­mit­ted in late 2019, the drug can­di­date was re­ject­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2020 due to what the FDA said was low­er-than-de­sired ex­po­sure lev­els in cer­tain weight groups, per Aque­s­tive’s re­count­ing.

Though the com­pa­ny re­sub­mit­ted its ap­pli­ca­tion in 2021 and re­ceived a PDU­FA date for that De­cem­ber, the FDA no­ti­fied Aque­s­tive that it could not make a fi­nal de­ci­sion at that time. Per an Aque­s­tive news re­lease, agency of­fi­cials were still “con­sid­er­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry is­sues” re­lat­ed to the drug’s ap­prov­abil­i­ty, though the com­pa­ny did not get in­to more specifics.

It’s not en­tire­ly clear whether this will amount to a sec­ond CRL or when the is­sue would be re­solved. In its first quar­ter earn­ings re­port ear­li­er this month, Aque­s­tive said fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the agency re­vealed the de­lay stems from “or­phan-drug ex­clu­siv­i­ty is­sues re­lat­ed to” the NDA, sug­gest­ing a patent con­flict.

Aque­s­tive’s drug, brand­ed Liber­vant, is an oral for­mu­la­tion of di­azepam, self-ad­min­is­tered as a film and placed in­side the cheek.

The chal­lenge now falls on Bar­ber to try to re­solve this is­sue. He joins sev­er­al new chief ex­ec­u­tives in try­ing to right the ship at their re­spec­tive com­pa­nies with the bear mar­ket show­ing no signs of abat­ing, in­clud­ing Zen­tal­is ear­li­er this week.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”

AstraZeneca and GSK are once again wrangling over talent.

The British pharma giant has filed suit against former VP and head of investor relations Chris Sheldon as he prepares to start a new job at its rival next month. AstraZeneca argued in a London court filing that Sheldon would be violating a non-compete agreement, which he was paid more than $774,000 in shares to sign back in 2021, Bloomberg reported.