Korea's largest pharmaceutical company, Yuhan Corp., and German giant Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (BI) have signed a collaboration and license agreement to develop a first-in-class dual agonist to treat nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and related liver diseases, following a similar path trod by other companies.

Approval of Alexion Pharmaceutical Inc.'s Soliris (eculizumab) injection to treat neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) in adult patients who are anti-aquaporin-4 (AQP4) antibody positive makes it the first and only FDA-approved treatment. It's also one of the most expensive treatments in the world, making it vulnerable to off-label use and the eventual creep of biosimilars into the market.

With Thursday's IPO pricings from Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp., Bridgebio Pharma and Morphic Holding Co., 2019 swallowed last year's record for the most money ever raised through biopharma IPOs in the month of June, bringing in $1.97 billion compared with $1.64 billion last year.

Encoded Therapeutics Inc. closed on a $104 million series C financing round, bringing the precision gene therapy company into a narrow field dominated by technological limitations and only a handful of approved products.

Frontier Medicines Corp. closed on a series A preferred stock financing round of $67 million for honing its pipeline and prepping for the clinic.

Minerva Neurosciences Inc.'s phase IIb trial of seltorexant (MIN-202) for insomnia disorder hit its primary endpoint and a secondary endpoint, giving the company stock (NASDAQ:NERV) a 40.2% lift Monday, helping to heal the damage from the past year.

Top-line data for Sanofi SA and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s phase II trial of the IL-33 antibody REGN-3500 show patients with moderate to severe asthma treated with Dupixent (dupilumab) monotherapy did numerically better than REGN-3500 across all endpoints. And combining REGN-3500 and Dupixent did not demonstrate increased benefit compared to Dupixent monotherapy.

Seven and Eight Biopharmaceuticals Inc. has signed a clinical research collaboration agreement with Roche Holding AG to explore the combination of BDB-001, an immune modulator targeting Toll-like receptors (TLR) 7 and 8, and atezolizumab, a monoclonal antibody against checkpoint target PD-L1, in treating solid tumors.

Denovo Biopharma LLC has licensed ORM-12741 from Orion Corp., along with global rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize the alpha-2c adrenoceptor antagonist that has failed several previous clinical trials.