Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH terminated its second metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) alliance on March 6, ending an $870 million license agreement inked with Yuhan Corp. for dual GLP-1/FGF21 agonist, BI-3006337 (YH-25724). Yuhan said March 7 that Boehringer, of Ingelheim, Germany, returned rights to YH-25724, a dual-acting glucagon-like peptide-1 and fibroblast growth factor 21 receptor agonist, based on the counterparty’s “strategic judgement” on developing MASH therapeutics.

The U.K.’s national health service (NHS) is rolling out a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool which can predict a patient’s risk of falling with a 97% accuracy rate. The AI software designed by Cera Care Ltd. is already in use in more than two-thirds of NHS integrated care systems across the country and NHS England hopes that the tool will prevent around 2,000 falls and hospital admissions each day.

Trimtech Therapeutics closed a £25 million (US$31 million) oversubscribed seed funding round to advance its targeted protein degradation treatments for neurodegenerative and inflammatory diseases.

A new multi-omics approach to unpicking how noncoding gene variants influence the development of common chronic diseases has identified tens of thousands of instances where variants have an impact on gene expression levels and gene splicing, the post-transcriptional modification that allows one gene to code for multiple proteins.

Relief Srl raised more than €1 million (US$1.08 million) in financing for Urorelief, its endourethral medical device which treats stress urinary incontinence. The Italian startup will use the funds to conduct clinical trials to validate the device as it looks to transform the lives of men and women suffering from the condition.

Trimtech Therapeutics closed a £25 million (US$31 million) oversubscribed seed funding round to advance its targeted protein degradation treatments for neurodegenerative and inflammatory diseases.

Persica Pharmaceuticals Ltd. has delivered positive 12-month follow-up data from its phase Ib study of PP-353, an injectable antibiotic for treating chronic lower back pain, and is now looking for a partner and further financing to take the product into phase III development.

Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc is buying Chimerix Inc. for $8.55 a share in cash, bringing the deal in at about $935 million. Jazz expands its cancer pipeline with the new acquisition’s lead candidate, dordaviprone, a small molecule for treating a rare, aggressive glioma that’s often found in children and young adults.

Sofinnova Partners raised a whopping €1.2 billion (US$1.26 billion) over the past year to invest in life sciences companies ranging from incubation to later-stage growth, and spanning biotech, med tech, industrial biotech and digital medicine.

The U.K. has released a huge repository of children’s genomic data after sequencing blood samples from three large cohorts recruited at birth and followed across three decades. The power of the data is amplified by the large volume of longitudinal health information, biological samples and responses to surveys and questionnaires that has been provided by participating families. Before this, large-scale publicly available genome sequences were limited to adult cohorts, and the only childhood genome sequence data was from children with rare diseases.