Active Biotech AB is banking an up-front payment of $35.6 million and could get $249.4 million more on the back of a partnering deal with Ipsen SA on its Phase III cancer drug tasquinimod (TASQ).

Setting down a weighty marker for partnering deals elsewhere, 4SC AG is pocketing €6 million (US$8.7 million) up front and could earn another €127 million in milestones, for licensing Japanese rights to its oral pan-histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor resminostat (4SC-201).

Pieris AG is banking €7 million (US$10.1 million) up front and could earn up to €200 million more in milestone payments and research funding from a discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo, based around its anticalin protein scaffold technology. (BioWorld International)

Pieris AG is banking 7 million (US$10.1 million) up front and could earn up to 200 million more in milestone payments and research funding from a discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo, based around its anticalin protein scaffold technology.

Although it does not expect to launch its hotly anticipated hepatitis C drug TMC435 until late 2013, at the earliest, Medivir AB is putting in place the supporting infrastructure now, by bidding to acquire specialty pharma firm BioPhausia AB, in a cash-and-shares deal valued at SEK565 million (US$90.1 million).

Shares in Intercell AG plunged 25 percent Monday after an independent data monitoring committee called for a halt in recruitment for a pivotal Phase II/III trial of a vaccine designed to prevent nosocomial Staphylococcus aureus infection. Although the vaccine, which is partnered with Merck & Co. Inc., did not meet pre-specified futility criteria in an interim analysis, the committee wants additional risk-benefit analyses to be conducted before dosing can resume.