Merck

Merck KGaA’s drug development program suffered a setback with the company’s most important experimental medicine as the cancer treatment bintrafusp alfa, being jointly developed by GlaxoSmithKline, failed early in a lead trial.

Lilly

Eli Lilly and Company and Precision BioSciences Inc. announced a research collaboration and exclusive license agreement to use Precision’s ARCUS genome editing platform to research and develop potential in vivo therapies for a series of genetic disorders.

Johnson & Johnson and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services expanded an agreement to support the next phase of Covid-19 vaccine candidate research and development, the company said.

Moderna

Moderna Inc. said an analysis of the early-stage data of the company’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine showed mRNA-1273 induced immune responses in older adults that were similar to younger participants.

U.K.-based Celleron Therapeutics signed a licensing agreement with Swiss pharma giant Roche for the worldwide rights to the cancer drug emactuzumab, a monoclonal antibody directed against colony-stimulating factor 1 (CSF-1R) expressed on macrophages.

Days after reports of Novavax Inc.’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine candidate producing antibodies in healthy patients in a clinical study, the company announced a license agreement with Serum Institute of India Private Limited (SIPL) to develop up to 1 billion doses of the preventative drug in India and other countries.

ARC Therapeutics launched with a $6 million financing led by founding investor Eshelman Ventures LLC.

Two years after AbbVie and Voyager Therapeutics first forged a collaboration to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, the partnership came to an end after AbbVie terminated the agreement.

Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Emergent BioSolutions inked another manufacturing agreement with AstraZeneca to support the development of a vaccine against Covid-19.

Zymeworks and longtime partner Merck signed a new license agreement. Merck was granted the right to develop additional multispecific antibody therapeutic candidates using Zymeworks’ Azymetric and EFECT platforms.