The firms’ partnership goes back to pre-merger Celgene, and BMS still has Dragonfly candidates in its pipeline. Ji Xing gets hypertension candidate from Phase Bio.

The gene therapy firm announced that Bristol terminated a collaboration started in 2015. Nona follows its recent alliance with Moderna with a second collaboration, this time with Dragonfly.

China's biopharma firms including Hengrui Medicine and HUTCHMED actively pursue licensing partners for their drug assets as the economic downturn caused by domestic COVID flare-ups continues worsening. Meanwhile, there are some predictions that smaller biotechs in the country may need to tap into multinationals' deep pockets to raise new funds.

The Finnish group has concluded an extensive search to partner its first-in-class CYP11A1 inhibitor, banking an impressive $290m upfront fee for the Phase II drug which is being evaluated for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.