Following its acquisition of Jounce Therapeutics Inc. for $95.6 million, Concentra Biosciences LLC lodged another proposal to acquire the U.S. and China biotech Lianbio Co. Ltd. The unsolicited and non-binding proposal filed Nov. 30 by San Diego-based Tang Capital Partners LP, Concentra’s parent firm, offered a 100% cash equity acquisition of the Shanghai- and Princeton, N.J.-based Lianbio at $4.30 per share, ringing up a deal worth around $465 million.
Five months since Eli Lilly and Co.’s $2.4 billion buyout of Dice Therapeutics Inc. and its Delscape platform for oral small-molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interactions, Lilly rolled the dice again for novel PPI targets by partnering with Japanese biotech Prism Biolab Co. Ltd.
Asep Medical Holdings Inc. is expanding operations into China with a joint venture (JV) with Chinese medical diagnostics firm Sansure Biotech Inc., ramping up the race to commercialize sepsis diagnostics in Asia.
Awak Technologies Pte Ltd. gained the U.S. FDA’s breakthrough designation for an artificial intelligence (AI)-based kidney disease progression prediction (KDDP) model on Nov. 27, following its $20 million fundraising that marked one of Singapore’s largest med-tech financings in 2023.
Asep Medical Holdings Inc. is expanding operations into China with a joint venture (JV) with Chinese medical diagnostics firm Sansure Biotech Inc., ramping up the race to commercialize sepsis diagnostics in Asia.
South Korean pharmaceutical Voronoi Inc. said that New Jersey-based Pyramid Biosciences Inc. terminated its previous $846 million deal for Voronoi’s solid and breast cancer drug candidate, VRN-08, in a letter dated Oct. 24, 2023.
In efforts to strengthen cooperation between the U.S. and South Korea’s life sciences sector, industry organizations like Biocom California and KoreaBIO are helping foster cross-border collaboration as Korea looks to ramp up the so-called Bio Economy 2.0. KoreaBIO, which stands for the Korea Biotechnology Industry Organization, in its latest feat welcomed a trade delegation run by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. and the World Trade Center San Diego in November 2023, helping bolster cooperation between companies in Korea and in the San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, regions.
Doubling efforts to thaw the global biotech capital freeze, the U.S. branch of Shanghai-based Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. Ltd. will ramp up investment into U.S. clinical-stage assets through a new joint investment vehicle with American health care advisory firm Treehill Partners.
South Korean researchers from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) developed a new fluorescence-based lateral-flow immunoassay (LFI) enhanced with gold nanorod (GNR)-based probes to detect viral infections like the influenza A virus.
South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) will head an international team of regulatory experts from 19 drug agencies worldwide, including the U.S. FDA and China National Institute for Food and Drug Control (NIFDC), to draft an international standard for artificial intelligence (AI)-based software.
