Altimmune Inc. will acquire Spitfire Pharma Inc. and its lead candidate, SP-1373 (to be renamed ALT-801), a GLP-1/glucagon receptor co-agonist for treating nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

Positive data from one clinical trial evaluating lumateperone in patients with bipolar disorder wasn't enough to lift Intra-Cellular Therapies Inc.'s stock Monday as another trial's failure with the same drug severely dampened the price of shares, while analysts took the long, more optimistic view.

The FDA placed a clinical hold Wednesday on a phase I trial by Unum Therapeutics Inc. after a patient experienced serious adverse events that included grade 3 neurotoxicity and cytomegalovirus infection, and grade 4 respiratory distress.

Boston Biomedical Inc. shuttered phase III study Canstem111P of napabucasin for patients with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, adding to the list of studies that have fallen in pancreatic cancer.

Korea's largest pharmaceutical company, Yuhan Corp., and German giant Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (BI) have signed a collaboration and license agreement to develop a first-in-class dual agonist to treat nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and related liver diseases, following a similar path trod by other companies.

Approval of Alexion Pharmaceutical Inc.'s Soliris (eculizumab) injection to treat neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) in adult patients who are anti-aquaporin-4 (AQP4) antibody positive makes it the first and only FDA-approved treatment. It's also one of the most expensive treatments in the world, making it vulnerable to off-label use and the eventual creep of biosimilars into the market.

With Thursday's IPO pricings from Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp., Bridgebio Pharma and Morphic Holding Co., 2019 swallowed last year's record for the most money ever raised through biopharma IPOs in the month of June, bringing in $1.97 billion compared with $1.64 billion last year.

Encoded Therapeutics Inc. closed on a $104 million series C financing round, bringing the precision gene therapy company into a narrow field dominated by technological limitations and only a handful of approved products.

Frontier Medicines Corp. closed on a series A preferred stock financing round of $67 million for honing its pipeline and prepping for the clinic.