Big Pharma Talks Deal-Making with Biotechs and Academia

WASHINGTON – Here's a new mantra, and possibly a new discipline, for biotechs looking to do deals with pharma: Be tentacular. That is the advice of Shaun Grady, head of strategic partnering and business development at AstraZeneca plc, who described how the UK pharma company turned down the offer to license Nektar Inc.'s NKTR-118, a Phase III compound for treating opioid-induced constipation, on "two or three occasions."