This week's roundup includes a handful of promotions by Eli Lilly, and various board and high-level appointments by companies including Kiadis Pharma, Aeterna Zentaris, Dermavant Sciences and Pliant Therapeutics.

FDA warning letters are up at foreign sites and down at domestic sites as agency ramps up presence abroad. Inadequate OOS investigations and faulty testing of drug components were top violations; contamination was a common issue; firms cited included Novartis, Mylan, Smithkline Beecham, Lonza and Noven.

After implementing a major workforce reduction in January, Abbott Laboratories re-organized its diversified company into three units – proprietary pharmaceuticals, durable growth products and innovation-driven devices. Its latest announcement cements that change: Abbott will divide into a diversified medical products company.

This article examines the question do external biopharma programs succeed at similar rates as internal projects? IN VIVO examined this question by analyzing the alliances of 2003, mining both Elsevier's Strategic Transactions database and SEC documents, and bolstering these data with independent reporting.