Eli Lilly and Co. got a breather when the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the company doesn’t owe Research Corporation Technologies Inc. (RCT) royalties on its diabetes drugs under a licensing agreement Lilly had made with Phillips Petroleum Co. in 1990 and that Phillips later sold to RCT.
Coming off a U.S. FDA approval of the first GLP-1 in pill format, Novo Nordisk A/S leaned further into oral drug delivery efforts, partnering with Vivtex Corp. to develop next-generation oral formulations of peptide and protein therapeutics in a potential $2.1 billion deal that marks the highest-profile news for Vivtex since the firm spun out of MIT in 2018.
GSK plc is paying $950 million cash to acquire 100% of 35Pharma Inc.’s equity and pipeline, including phase II-ready candidate HS-235 for pulmonary hypertension. The acquisition agreement comes a day after GSK added two small interfering RNA assets from Nanjing, China-based Frontier Biotechnologies Inc. through a license deal reaching up to $1 billion.
