Cancer deals involving Junshi/Wigen, Allist/Octimet, Yufan/Abound, Takeda/Presage, Daiichi Sankyo/AnHeart, LegoChem/Harbour Biomed, plus a stem cell partnership and a lysosomal storage disorder agreement.

Strides is expanding its presence in synthetic injectables via a new company, SteriScience, while keeping its biologics injectables business under Stelis. A head start with existing IP assets and those from a new joint venture with Brooks Labs will enable the fledgling firm to file its first ANDA in fiscal 2021, with break-even seen in two years.

Private Company Edition: Neogene, Escient, ESCAPE, Resolution and Attralus raised a combined $320m in venture capital rounds. Also, large Recursion round could double the size of its pipeline, Korro Bio raised $91.5m and Flagship launched Generate Biomedicines.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has seen a hectic pace of cancer deal-making, including the two largest biopharma M&A deals of the year and 23 with upfront value of at least $100m.

Merck & Co. will pay Seattle Genetics $725m up front in cash under the two deals and make a $1bn equity investment in the company, providing financial flexibility to broadly fund the pipeline.

Join us for a quick audio roundup of major events in the global biopharma industry over the past week, as reported by Scrip.

The company paid twice Immunomedics’ last closing stock price to access Trodelvy, approved for triple-negative breast cancer with potential in other solid tumors as monotherapy and in combinations.

Deal Snapshot: The firms are partnering on a digital therapeutic for schizophrenia in a deal potentially worth $500m. 

Public Company Edition: The former Allergan CEO is taking a special purpose acquisition corporation public to generate $460m for deals in familiar biopharma niches. Also, IPOs are expected to keep up a robust pace in the fall and Albireo raises $160m on the success of its drug for pediatric liver diseases.