The top two biggest money biopharma deals in 2020 occurred in June, putting the month ahead of all other months for the year in terms of deal values and volumes.
HONG KONG – Seoul-based Vuno Inc. faces the happy dilemma of being able to choose from multiple partnership offers to add to the string of recent deals inked by the South Korean company. The company’s most recent deal is an agreement with Dong Wha Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. for a ₩3 billion ($2.5 million) investment. For Dong Wha, the deal is a culmination of a three-year effort to diversify its business via active investments in the latest health care trends.
BEIJING – U.S.-Taiwan biotech Acepodia Inc., of Burlingame, Calif., and Taipei, has licensed out two of its cell therapy candidates, ACE-1702 and ACE-1655, to Chinese CAR T therapy developer JW Therapeutics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.
The two-year standstill provision in Assembly Biosciences Inc.’s potential $540 million pact with Beigene Ltd. to advance hepatitis B virus (HBV) therapies was “highly negotiated,” said Jason Okazaki, Assembly’s chief legal and business officer.
Strata Oncology Inc. has inked an agreement with newcomer Elevation Oncology to ramp up patient identification and enrollment for the latter’s phase II CRESTONE study evaluating the use of seribantumab in patients with recurrent, locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors of any origin that have a neuregulin-1 (NRG1) gene fusion.
HONG KONG – Takeda Pharmaceuticals Inc. is gaining access to the “library of libraries,” inking an agreement with Twist Bioscience Corp. in one of the Osaka, Japan-based firm’s recent efforts to build a sustained innovative R&D growth engine.
Fulcrum Therapeutics Inc. and Myokardia Inc. agreed to discover, develop and commercialize therapies for treating genetic cardiomyopathies, a deal spun out of two companies with a mutual appreciation of each other’s abilities as well as personal relations and networking, Fulcrum’s CEO told BioWorld.
DUBLIN – Roche Holding AG has joined Jnana Therapeutics Inc. in its quest to drug the human repertoire of solute carrier (SLC) metabolite transporters as a means of tackling a swath of immune-mediated and neurological diseases. The Basel, Switzerland-based pharma is paying Boston-based Jnana $40 million up front and could pay over $1 billion more in research funding, preclinical, development and commercial milestones, as well as sales royalties, in a multitarget deal.
HONG KONG – Tokyo-based Terumo Corp. has snapped up Dutch health care startup Quirem Medical BV, which develops selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) microspheres to treat liver cancer.
The two-year standstill provision in Assembly Biosciences Inc.’s potential $540 million pact with Beigene Ltd. to advance hepatitis B virus (HBV) therapies was “highly negotiated,” said Jason Okazaki, Assembly’s chief legal and business officer.