The pool of Big Pharmas competing to develop game-changing antibody-drug conjugates continues to grow, with the water now at a boil after two more sizable licensing pacts.

Seeds from Mayo Clinic’s cell and gene therapy accelerator Mayflower Bioventures have taken flight in a new biotech called Primera Therapeutics, which launches today with a blossoming $750 million partnership to work on therapies for mitochondrial diseases.

Viking Therapeutics thinks it has rumbled a raid on its nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) trade secrets. In a lawsuit, the San Diego-based biotech has accused China’s Ascletis BioScience of using information shared under a confidentiality agreement to turbocharge its expansion into the NASH development race.

Fledgling metabolic biotech Metacrine is back out in open corporate seas after the sinking of a planned merger with Equillium.

ORIC Pharmaceuticals now has enough cash to run operations through the first half of 2025 thanks to a $25 million equity investment and a new clinical partnership with Pfizer.

Ipsen’s “largely derisked” rare disease candidate was evidently still too risky for regulators, with the FDA rejecting the company’s new drug application for palovarotene.

It can be difficult for a spinout to distinguish itself from its parent company—especially if that company has been around for a century. Just ask Embecta CEO Devdatt Kurdikar, Ph.D., who discussed the slow process of emerging from BD’s shadow in an interview with Fierce Medtech earlier this year, only a few weeks after the diabetes devicemaker had left the nest.

RNA expert ProQR Therapeutics is ending a tough year on a high note thanks to a $75 million expansion of a genetic medicines partnership with Eli Lilly.

Vistagen is doubling back to a familiar face, acquiring Pherin Pharmaceuticals in a bid to wipe out any future royalty payments in addition to nabbing three new assets. The deal comes more than four years after Vistagen licensed Pherin’s nasal spray to treat social anxiety, which sits atop the former’s pipeline.

In one of the most lopsided biobucks deals this publication has ever seen, Merck & Co. is offering $175 million upfront to Kelun-Biotech plus an eye-popping $9.3 billion in potential milestones on the tail end.