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.

Gene therapy specialist Uniqure N.V. said Tuesday that, with confidence inspired by new 52-week data on its investigational hemophilia B therapy, etranacogene dezaparvovec, it plans to submit a BLA for the program with partner CSL Behring LLC in first quarter of 2022. Uniqure meanwhile has moved to acquire Corlieve Therapeutics SAS and its lead program to treat temporal lobe epilepsy, the most common form of focal epilepsy. The acquisition, worth up to €250 million (US$297.3 million) for Corlieve, includes €46.3 million cash up front.

While biopharma deals are very much in line with the early pandemic months of 2020, mergers and acquisitions are telling a different story – one in which values are down by 76%. As of June 22, BioWorld has recorded 956 deals, including licensings, collaborations and joint ventures, valued at $80.2 billion in 2021, as well as 59 completed M&As worth $29.1 billion. In comparison with the same timeframe in 2020, the volume of both deals and M&As is down slightly by about 10 deals each, but the lack of high-value M&As, or mega-mergers worth more than $10 billion, has placed 2021 far behind last year. Deal values, however, are up by 4%.

The agreement between gout player Horizon plc and RNAi expert Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. could result in a subcutaneously given, infrequently dosed fix for the disease that takes aim at xanthine dehydrogenase. “They brought us the target – it wasn’t something we were developing,” said Arrowhead CEO Christopher Anzalone, but the Pasadena, Calif.-based firm’s research on hepatocyte-directed therapies provides confidence.

A co-research agreement between Ubix Therapeutics Inc. and Debiopharm International SA aimed at creating a new antibody degraducer conjugates drug modality to treat cancer will combine Ubix’s Degraducer molecule with Debiopharm’s antibody-drug conjugate linker Multilink to specifically target cancer cells.

Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) and Eisai Co. Ltd. inked a potential $3.1 billion agreement to co-develop and co-commercialize the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) MORAb-202 for advanced solid tumors. Eisai’s first ADC, MORAb-202 pairs the company’s anti-folate receptor alpha (FRα) antibody with the Tokyo-based firm’s anticancer agent eribulin using an enzyme cleavable linker. It is characterized as a potential best-in-class candidate and is under investigation for tumors that include endometrial, ovarian, lung and breast cancers in two studies: a phase I effort in Japan and a phase I/II experiment in the U.S. The companies plan to enter the registrational stage of development as early as 2022.

Brain Scientific Inc. plans to acquire Piezo Motion Corp. in an all-stock transaction expected to close in July 2021. The deal depends in part on the successful closing of a $5 million funding round. At closing, Brain Scientific will acquire 100% of Piezo’s outstanding shares along with its assets and liabilities. Piezo Motion’s shareholders will receive the number of shares of Brain Scientific’s common stock equal to 100% of its issued and outstanding shares immediately prior to closing on a fully diluted, as converted basis.

Diagnostics powerhouse Danaher Corp. has agreed to buy Aldevron LLC, a privately held biotech company that supplies a key ingredient for COVID-19 vaccines, from EQT VIII Fund for $9.6 billion in cash. Based in Fargo, N.D., with additional operations in Madison, Wis., Aldevron makes high-quality plasmid DNA, mRNA and recombinant proteins used in vaccines, gene and cell therapy, gene editing and diagnostic applications.