John Tsai, a for­mer chief med­ical of­fi­cer at No­var­tis and Am­gen, will steer Dai­ichi Sanky­o's glob­al R&D ef­forts start­ing April 1.

He'll take over from Ken Takeshi­ta, who is step­ping down five years in­to the role. Dur­ing that time, an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates — for which Dai­ichi is known — blos­somed in pop­u­lar­i­ty and be­came one of the lead­ing can­cer treat­ment modal­i­ties for phar­ma deal­mak­ers.

Dai­ichi CEO Hi­royu­ki Okuza­wa said in the Fri­day an­nounce­ment that Tsai will help the drug­mak­er ful­fill its next five-year busi­ness plan "and be­yond." The com­pa­ny is slat­ed to present this plan on April 7. It's al­ready ex­ceed­ed the rev­enue goals of its pre­vi­ous it­er­a­tion, which was un­veiled in 2021.

But the road ahead might have some chal­lenges.

💰 Can­del prices $100M of­fer­ing, inks $100M roy­al­ty deal: Can­dle aims to use the funds from the of­fer­ing to boost its aglatim­a­gene be­sade­n­ovec pro­gram, an on­colyt­ic virus-based ther­a­py al­so known as CAN-2409 or aglatim­a­gene. The biotech is try­ing to get the drug ap­proved in a form of prostate can­cer, and plans to launch a Phase 3 lung can­cer tri­al in the sec­ond quar­ter. The roy­al­ty deal, signed with RTW In­vest­ments, is con­tin­gent on a prostate can­cer ap­proval. Can­del said it in­tends to file for the prostate can­cer FDA sub­mis­sion by the end of 2026. — Max Gel­man

🟢 FDA ap­proves As­traZeneca's fixed du­ra­tion Calquence reg­i­men for cer­tain blood can­cers: The treat­ment was ap­proved for pa­tients with chron­ic lym­pho­cyt­ic leukemia or small lym­pho­cyt­ic lym­phoma, and is meant to give them time off ther­a­py. The reg­i­men com­bines Calquence, a BTK in­hibitor, with Ab­b­Vie and Roche’s Ven­clex­ta. — Lei Lei Wu

→ As Sanofi looks ahead to the Belén Gar­i­jo era, the French phar­ma will al­so have a new head of spe­cial­ty care on March 1. Bri­an Foard will step down on Feb. 28 for “an ex­ter­nal lead­er­ship op­por­tu­ni­ty,” and Manuela Buxo will take his place. Buxo held a va­ri­ety of roles at Bay­er be­fore she joined Sanofi in 2014 as head of glob­al cat­e­gories & in­no­va­tion. She has been glob­al fran­chise head of im­munol­o­gy since Ju­ly 2023, a ther­a­peu­tic area that was a point of em­pha­sis un­der Paul Hud­son. Bill Si­bold ran the spe­cial­ty care busi­ness be­fore he be&