VIENNA – A certain amount of abstraction is hard to avoid at events like BIO Europe. At this week's meeting there's been no shortage of panels populated with old and wise big pharma executives and grizzled venture capital investors grandly pronouncing on the 'dos and don'ts' of partnering and deal-making. The onus, it seems, is always on the junior partner, which must learn to dance to the bigger partner's tune.

VIENNA – A live – and lively – rendition of the overture to The Marriage of Figaro was the perfect start to the 2019 edition of BIO Europe Spring Monday. Mozart's great opera – premiered in Vienna in 1786 – celebrated love of the shared and unrequited variety, and while most biotech executives will be less emotional in their calculations, some will doubtless have to deal with rejection from the objects of their affection over the course of this week's partnering meeting. For those that do manage to strike a deal, the challenge will be to ensure that the course of the partnership runs smoothly. Even if partnering deals do not quite have the same longevity of a marriage, like that institution, they should not be entered into lightly.

DUBLIN – Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. is loading up on 'Scandi' technologies to broaden its clinical and research pipeline, striking deals with Solna, Sweden-based Affibody AB on clinical-stage "affibody" drug ABY-039, which targets the neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn), and with Copenhagen, Denmark-based Zealand Pharma A/S on an alliance to develop up to four peptide-based therapies for complement-mediated diseases.

DUBLIN – PDC*line Pharma SAS could earn up to €108 million (US$122.7 million) in up-front and milestone payments from a license and option agreement with LG Chem Ltd. for its cell-based cancer vaccine, PDC*lung, which is in development for non-small-cell lung cancer.

DUBLIN – The contest to develop new therapeutics targeting transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-beta1) signaling in cancer intensified this week, as both Abbvie Inc. and Scholar Rock Holding Corp. disclosed clinical trial starts for their respective drug candidates. In the case of Abbvie, of North Chicago, the move triggered a $30 million milestone payment to its partner, Argenx SE, of Breda, the Netherlands.

DUBLIN – Shares in Geneuro SA rose as much as 35 percent Tuesday on news that its multiple sclerosis (MS) candidate, temelimab, showed hints of efficacy on several measures of disease progression and neuroprotection in patients in a phase IIb extension study.

DUBLIN – Maze Therapeutics Inc. recently secured $191 million in initial funding to join the ranks of biotechnology firms that aim to uncover new biology and new drug targets by sifting through large volumes of genomic and phenotypic data and testing the hypotheses those analyses generate by carrying out genome-wide perturbations within cellular disease models. 

DUBLIN – Try as they might, management at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. was unable to shake off investor concerns that the company's RNAi drug, givosiran, may have a problematic safety profile, despite hitting the primary endpoint of the Envision phase III trial in acute hepatic porphyria (AHP) with a very robust level of significance.