Sanofi CEO Paul Hud­son bet big on im­munol­o­gy. When Belén Gar­i­jo takes over as CEO next week, she will have to de­cide whether to con­tin­ue that wa­ger.

The di­rec­tion Gar­i­jo elects to pur­sue will like­ly have ram­i­fi­ca­tions not just for Sanofi’s R&D fu­ture, but for the com­pa­ny’s iden­ti­ty. Un­der Hud­son, Sanofi went all-in on im­munol­o­gy, try­ing to tack­le a wide range of dis­eases, from eczema and asth­ma to mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis and rare neu­roin­flam­ma­to­ry con­di­tions.

But Hud­son’s ef­forts left a mixed track record in the clin­ic, and it prob­a­bly doesn’t make sense for Gar­i­jo to con­tin­ue down the same path, Jef­feries man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Michael Leucht­en said in an in­ter­view.

RIPK1 is be­com­ing a rel­a­tive desert for large drug­mak­ers.

Eli Lil­ly has joined the ex­o­dus, rip­ping apart the re­main­der of its up to $960 mil­lion part­ner­ship with Rigel Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. The move comes af­ter Genen­tech, Sanofi, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb and GSK have pared back re­search in the sig­nal­ing path­way over the years.

The phar­ma gi­ant gave no­tice to Rigel of the of­fi­cial ter­mi­na­tion of their 2021 agree­ment ear­li­er this month, ac­cord­ing to a Rigel SEC fil­ing on Tues­day.

Lil­ly had al­ready toned down the tie-up in the fall, when it told Rigel it would scrap work on a pre­clin­i­cal CNS dis­ease pro­gram. Now, the In­di­anapo­lis phar­ma is al­so call­ing it quits on a Phase 2-stage RIPK1 in­hibitor called ocadusert­ib (al­so known as LY3871801 and R552). Lil­ly had com­plet­ed a Phase 2a tri­al of the ex­per­i­men­tal med­i­cine in cer­tain pa­tients with rheuma­toid arthri­tis.

Nek­tar Ther­a­peu­tics prices $325 mil­lion pub­lic of­fer­ing: The Bay Area biotech is sell­ing about 3.5 mil­lion shares of stock at $92 per share. The pro­ceeds will fund “gen­er­al cor­po­rate pur­pos­es,” in­clud­ing Phase 3 tri­als for its can­di­date rezpe­galdesleukin in atopic der­mati­tis and alope­cia area­ta. The drug, al­so known as rezpeg, failed a Phase 2b tri­al in alope­cia area­ta last year. But da­ta from the ex­ten­sion por­tion more or less met Wall Street an­a­lysts’ ex­pec­ta­tions, fu­el­ing Nek­tar’s am­bi­tions. — Nicole De­Feud­is

Maze Ther­a­peu­tics’ $150M of­fer­ing: The San Fran­cis­co biotech now has enough cash to fu­el its R&D in­to 2029, sup­port­ing treat­ment can­di­dates for APOL1-me­di­at­ed kid­ney dis­ease, phenylke­tonuria and chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease. The biotech’s shares MAZE were up near­ly 9% in ear­ly Wednes­day trad­ing. — Kyle LaHu­cik