University of Auckland senior research fellow Jeff Smaill first visited China in 2012 as part of a team of 15 scientists from the Maurice Wilkins Center, one of New Zealand’s centers of excellence, to meet with scientists at the Guangzhou Institute of Medicine and Health to find partners to collaborate on drug development projects. The scientists started collaborating that year, and the first project is already in phase I trials in China. It was a joint discovery and development partnership from the beginning, he said.

While the size of the market is enormous, drug development and treatments for women’s health care still lag behind what is offered for men. There has been a renaissance in the past few years, however, led by investors and companies that have wrestled with determining exactly what encompasses women’s health and how to meet its challenges.

Equillium Inc. plans to continue on its own with itolizumab – now the top pipeline priority – as Ono Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. Is letting expire the option for rights to the monoclonal antibody, designed to target the CD6-ALCAM signaling pathway.

While the size of the market is enormous, drug development and treatments for women’s health care still lag behind what is offered for men. There has been a renaissance in the past few years, however, led by investors and companies that have wrestled with determining exactly what encompasses women’s health and how to meet its challenges.

While the size of the market is enormous, drug development and treatments for women’s health care still lag behind what is offered for men. There has been a renaissance in the past few years, however, led by investors and companies that have wrestled with determining exactly what encompasses women’s health and how to meet its challenges.

Boston Scientific Corp. signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cortex Inc., from Ajax Health Inc. to develop an integrated mapping and ablation solution for cardiac arrhythmias. Cortex’s Optimap system employs a basket catheter and algorithm to identify active sources for atrial fibrillation beyond the pulmonary veins on which most mapping and ablation technology currently focus.

Equillium Inc. plans to continue on its own with itolizumab – now the top pipeline priority – as Ono Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. Is letting expire the option for rights to the monoclonal antibody, designed to target the CD6-ALCAM signaling pathway.

Evolveimmune Therapeutics Inc. has secured its fourth big pharma investor and its first pharma development partnership in a deal with Abbvie Inc. The multitarget development deal with North Chicago-based Abbvie includes $65 million now, combined between an up-front payment and an equity investment. Branford, Conn.-based Evolveimmune is also eligible for up to $1.4 million in aggregate option fees and milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties on sales of products that are optioned by Abbvie.

Two days after Monte Rosa Therapeutics Inc. signed a molecular glue degrader deal with Novartis AG, two other companies, Biogen Inc. and Neomorph Inc., are moving forward in the same space in a partnership worth up to $1.45 billion. Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen and San Diego-based Neomorph will develop molecular glue degraders (MGDs) for priority targets in Alzheimer’s, rare neurological and immunological diseases, using Neomorph’s MGD platform to identify and validate novel small-molecule protein degraders.