HONG KONG – Foresee Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. and TRPharm Ilac Sanayi Tic. A/S have entered an exclusive licensing and distribution agreement for the commercialization of Foresee’s most advanced asset, FP-001, a luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone-agonist therapy for prostate cancer, in Turkey and certain Middle East countries.

Analysts voiced no little skepticism in 2014 when Celgene Corp. acquired privately held Nogra Pharma Ltd. to get its hands on GED-0301 (mongersen), a phase III-ready, oral antisense DNA oligonucleotide targeting the Smad7 protein to treat moderate to severe Crohn’s disease (CD) and related indications.

Astellas Pharma Inc.’s U.S.-based regenerative medicine center has agreed to pay Seattle-based Universal Cells Inc. up to $124 million for global rights to use its Universal Donor Cell technology in a new cell therapy for an undisclosed indication.

Prospects for Durect Corp.’s Posimir (Saber-bupivacaine) dimmed dramatically with the late Thursday disclosure of a failed phase III study of the extended-release analgesic. Data from the PERSIST study, which had been designed to address a 2014 FDA complete response letter (CRL), showed a favorable trend but fell short of statistical significance on the primary endpoint of reducing pain on movement over the first 48 hours after surgery.

Spero Therapeutics Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., started a phase I safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics study of SPR-994, an orally administered carbapenem antibiotic, in healthy subjects.

Helix BioPharma Corp., of Richmond Hill, Ontario, said it closed a private placement financing for gross proceeds of approximately C$3.9 million.

Calcium flux into neurons is a key event in memory formation as well as neuronal signaling more generally, and calcium levels in neurons are tightly regulated by calcium binding proteins.

DUBLIN – ADC Therapeutics SA (ADCT) closed $200 million in a private financing round, the fourth largest on record for a European biopharmaceutical firm.

Cirius Therapeutics Inc., of San Diego, reported preclinical data showing stellate cell activation and expression of markers of fibrosis were reduced when mitochondrial pyruvate carrier was deleted from liver cells or when mitochondrial pyruvate carrier was attenuated with Cirius’ drug MSDC-0602K, which modulates the entry of pyruvate into the mitochondria.