Bayer AG’s copanlisib was approved in China for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed follicular lymphoma who have received at least two prior systemic therapies. It is the first indication approved in the country for copanlisib, which is entering a market with room to grow but marked by some domestic competition.

Coherent Biopharma Co. Ltd. raised $100 million in series B and B+ financing rounds to step up its efforts to develop its bi-targeting ligand-drug conjugate (Bi-XDC) drugs and get them to market. Suzhou, China-based Coherent plans to use its newly expanded war chest to support the clinical trials of three candidates, CBP-1008, CBP-1018 and CBP-1019, as well as an IND application for CBP-8008 in China and the U.S., the company told BioWorld.

In a deal worth as much as $600 million, Lanova Medicines Ltd. licensed exclusive global rights to Astrazeneca plc for LM-305, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) targeting GPRC5D, for multiple myeloma (MM). Lanova will receive up-front and near-term payments of up to $55 million and development and commercial milestone payments of up to $545 million, as well as tiered royalties on net sales worldwide.

In the latest deal from the burgeoning antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) space, Eisai Co. Ltd. and privately held Bliss Biopharmaceutical (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd. reached a development and commercialization agreement that could be worth up to $2 billion. The massive collaboration is the eighth largest so far this year and one of three that involve ADCs in the year’s top 10 deals.

Roche AG acquired global rights to Zion Pharma Ltd.’s lead program, ZN-A-1041, an orally administered selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor that is designed to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and can prevent and treat brain metastases in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patients.

Albatroz Therapeutics Pte Ltd. has secured $3 million in seed funding to develop therapeutic antibodies against a new target that degrades the extracellular matrix, a key contributor to cancer and arthritis.

Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co. Ltd.’s anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody toripalimab showed positive interim event-free survival (EFS) results in a phase III study to treat patients with resectable non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This is the world’s first phase III trial that shows perioperative treatment with an anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody significantly extends EFS of patients with resectable NSCLC, according to Shanghai-based Junshi Biosciences.

Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd. has experienced yet another setback with its quizartinib NDA submission, as the U.S. FDA has now extended the review period by three months to July 24, 2023, to allow additional time to review requested updates to the proposed Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies.

Junshi Biosciences Co. Ltd.’s PARP inhibitor, senaparib (JS-109/IMP4297), met the primary endpoint of progression-free survival in a phase III ovarian cancer study, according to a prespecified interim analysis.