After a verbal offer to buy out OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $52 per share - about $3.5 billion - failed to entice the company's board last month, Astellas Pharma Inc. is taking its bid straight to shareholders but may have to up its price to get the deal done. (BioWorld Today)

Regulus Therapeutics Inc. nailed down a deal with GlaxoSmithKline plc to develop an miR-122 antagonist in hepatitis C virus in a $150 million-plus partnership that cast a spotlight on intellectual property rights relating to the liver-specific microRNA target, given that GSK previously declined an option for a clinical-stage drug from Danish firm Santaris Pharma A/S. (BioWorld Today)

With the ink still drying on its termination agreement with Johnson & Johnson for troubled antibiotic ceftobiprole, Basilea Pharmaceutica AG landed a lucrative partnership for its late-stage antifungal product isavuconazole. (BioWorld Today)

Gilead Sciences Inc.'s ongoing strategy to diversify its pipeline scored a small victory with the approval of inhaled aztreonam lysine drug Cayston, but there's no question the firm's future growth still hinges largely on its next-generation HIV pipeline. (BioWorld Today)