PARIS – Aptargroup Inc. is negotiating to buy Voluntis SA in a move that would complement its existing digital solutions portfolio and expand services to address multiple conditions and chronic diseases. "By being part of Aptar, we will be able to pursue a common ambition aimed at providing a complete digital health platform combining connected devices and digital therapeutics," Pierre Leurent, CEO and co-founder of Voluntis, told BioWorld.
While the number of biopharma’s nonprofit deals and grants, as well as their values, have dropped by more than 20% compared with last year, almost 71% of the combined funds are targeting COVID-19 therapeutics, vaccines and other pandemic efforts.
Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH has begun a three-year collaboration with researchers at Australia’s WEHI, looking into a potentially powerful approach to targeted protein degradation also being studied by its German rival Merck KGaA.
Boston Scientific Corp. has exercised an option as part of a 2020 agreement to acquire Farapulse Inc. in full, folding the startup’s pulsed electric field ablation technology for the treatment of atrial fibrillation and other cardiac arrhythmias into its own electrophysiology portfolio. With a 27% stake in Farapulse already, it will pay about $295 million for the remainder.
Glaxosmithkline plc CEO Emma Walmsley has set out further details of the company’s forthcoming split, saying that the firm’s late-stage pipeline could help deliver sales of more than £33 billion by 2031.
Bristol Myers Squibb Co. and Eisai Co. Ltd. inked a potential $3.1 billion agreement to co-develop and co-commercialize the antibody-drug conjugate MORAb-202 for advanced solid tumors.
Zai Lab Ltd. and Macrogenics Inc. have announced a collaboration and license agreement involving up to four immuno-oncology molecules in a deal potentially worth upward of $1.5 billion. The deal makes sense as both are upcoming companies at around the same stage in development – making progress in oncology with first products recently approved by regulators.
Just days after Hifibio Therapeutics Inc. closed a $75 million series D financing, Fibrogen Inc. has agreed to pay the antibody specialist $25 million up front and as much as $1.1 billion in milestones for rights to multiple preclinical programs for autoimmune diseases and cancer. The deal includes exclusive rights to Galectin-9 programs, in which the lead asset is expected to enter clinical development in the first quarter of 2023, and options to license all assets in Hifibio's CXCR5 and CCR8 programs.
Jacobio Pharmaceuticals Group Co. Ltd. has received a milestone payment of $20 million from Abbvie Inc. for dosing the first two patients in the U.S. for a global phase I/IIa study of JAB-3312 in combination with pembrolizumab and binimetinib, taking another step forward in the global SHP2 race.
Viiv Healthcare Group has continued its quest for patient-friendly long-acting HIV drugs, signing a potential $740 million deal with Halozyme Therapeutics Inc. to develop injections that could be dosed more than six months apart.
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