Keeping with the trend of high-value biopharma deals, the second quarter of 2019 logged another eight partnerships worth $1 billion or more, with Gilead Sciences Inc. a party to three of them.

HONG KONG - Incyte Corp. entered a collaboration and licensing deal to flip its greater China rights to an investigational anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody to Zai Lab Ltd., of Shanghai. The candidate, INCMGA-0012, is currently being evaluated as a monotherapy in registration-directed trials for patients with MSI-high endometrial cancer, Merkel cell carcinoma and anal cancer.

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.

Bracco Imaging SpA. is buying prostate cancer imaging specialist Blue Earth Diagnostics Ltd. for $450 million, acquiring full rights to Axumin (F18-fluciclovine), a PET radiocontrast agent originally developed by Chicago-based GE Healthcare.

Japanese biopharma Carna Biosciences Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc., of Foster City, Calif., have signed a $470 million R&D collaboration to develop and commercialize small-molecule compounds in immuno-oncology. Under the agreement, Gilead will license worldwide rights to develop and commercialize inhibitors against an undisclosed immuno-oncology target from Kobe, Japan-based Carna. Additionally, Gilead will have access to Carna's lipid kinase drug discovery platform.