In its second large deal of the calendar year, Neurocrine Biosciences Inc. acquired the rights to Xenon Pharmaceutical Inc.’s selective sodium channel inhibitor for treating epileptic encephalopathy. Xenon receives $30 million up front, $20 million in equity and up to $1.7 billion in potential development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments.

HONG KONG – Seoul, South Korea-based GI Innovation Inc. has licensed to Nanjing, Jiangsu-based Simcere Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. rights to its immunotherapy drug candidate, G1-101, a bispecific CD80/interleukin2 (IL-2) variant fusion protein.

LONDON – Eight years after the first licensing deal unwound, Immupharma plc has found a new commercialization partner for its lupus treatment, Lupuzor.

Veloxis Pharmaceuticals A/S’ board chairman, Michael Heffernan, said investors will find out in “the next four weeks” more details related to the $1.3 billion takeover by Tokyo-based Asahi Kasei Corp., which gets control of Envarsus XR, an improved formulation of tacrolimus for prophylaxis of organ rejection in kidney transplant patients converted from tacrolimus and for use in de novo kidney transplant patients.

Austin, Texas-based Asuragen Inc. is joining forces with Wave Life Sciences USA Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., to change the fatal trajectory of Huntington’s disease. 

DUBLIN – Novartis AG is making a $9.7 billion bet that the economics of an siRNA-based drug can better those of monoclonal antibodies and thus provide it with a dominant position in a major but still emerging cardiovascular drug market. The Basel, Switzerland-based pharma made an $85 per share offer for The Medicines Co., which has taken inclisiran, an siRNA-based inhibitor of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) to the brink of an approval in reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event – heart attack or stroke – in high-risk patients with cardiovascular disease or high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) who are inadequately controlled on current therapies.

HONG KONG - South Korean biopharmaceutical company Ph Pharma Co. Ltd., based in Seoul, and U.S. biotech Immunome Inc., of Exton, Pa., are working together on antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) in a partnership agreement under which Immunome will discover antibodies using its platform while Ph Pharma will develop the ADC candidates and verify safety and efficacy.

While Burt Adelman has been in Boston since 1991, it wasn’t until he joined Novo Ventures Inc. about four years ago that he realized there was often no way to tie the area’s drug development together into something resembling a cohesive whole.

LONDON – After a long haul to market, recent approvals and initial commercial successes of advanced cell and gene therapies are shifting the balance of power between biotech and pharma in dealmaking.