Plus deals involving BiomX/Adapative Phage, One/NEX-I, Shionogi/FunPep, Taiho/Haihe, Kinnate/Pierre Fabre, StemCell Technologies/SQZ and more, as well as tech transfer agreements.

AstraZeneca vaccine chief Mark Esser is excited about the first in vitro data on AZD3152 which show that the antibody neutralizes all known variants, from Wuhan to Omicron XBB.1.5.

Vertex and CRISPR look beyond beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease. Also, Bicycle gets $50m up front in Novartis deal, Regeneron commits $75m initially under a Treg collaboration with Sonoma, and Jounce gets a better deal from Concentra to wave off Redx merger.

During Q2, biopharma merger and acquisition value reached $25.4bn and drew in $27.3bn in potential deal value from alliances. Device company M&A values reached $2.7bn, while in vitro diagnostic firms and research tools players completed M&A activity that totaled $534.3m.