Novo Nordisk is paying Valo Health $60 million up front to gain three preclinical cardiovascular disease programs. Milestone payments for those programs and others covered under the artificial intelligence drug discovery pact could reach up to $2.7 billion.

Magnet Biomedicine builds on decades of molecular glue research from its scientific co-founder, Harvard University Professor Stuart Schreiber. The startup is developing drugs that take these glues beyond the biotech industry’s current focus on targeted protein degradation.

Intarcia Therapeutics’ GLP-1 agonist product candidate for type 2 diabetes now belongs to i2o Therapeutics, which will make the treatment’s case for approval at an upcoming FDA advisory committee meeting. The startup’s $46 million Series A financing is one of several recently announced funding rounds.

Pear Therapeutics was once regarded as a digital therapeutics pioneer, but its spiral into bankruptcy has the industry searching for the best path forward. While some favor going direct to consumers, others say the solution is in generating more robust clinical trial data to persuade hesitant payers.

Eli Lilly’s partnership with Verve Therapeutics covers the development of a preclinical therapy addressing a protein associated with cardiovascular disease risk. The in vivo gene-editing therapy is a potential one-time treatment.

Ironwood Pharmaceuticals is paying $1 billion to acquire VectivBio, a biotech whose lead program could become a blockbuster treatment for a gastrointestinal disorder. Preliminary Phase 3 data are expected by the end of 2023.

The FDA approved Omisirge, an allogeneic cell therapy from Gamida Cell that could improve access to stem cell transplants as treatments for blood cancers. The biotech makes its therapy from umbilical cord blood.

Pierre Fabre is paying Scorpion Therapeutics $65 million to begin a partnership on clinical development and potential commercialization of two targeted therapies for non-small cell lung cancer. The Scorpion drugs could have safety advantages over approved Johnson & Johnson and Takeda therapies that address the same rare genetic signature.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals aims to use CRISPR Therapeutics’ gene-editing technology to develop type 1 diabetes cell therapies that don’t prompt the immune system to reject them. This approach could compete with a Sana Biotechnology program expected to reach its first test in humans this year.

Pear Therapeutics isn’t meeting the commercialization goals for its prescription digital therapeutics, so it’s now seeking strategic alternatives for the business. Prospective buyers can pick up Pear’s FDA-cleared products for substance use disorder, opioid use disorder, and insomnia.

GV led Chroma Medicine’s Series B financing round, which the biotech will apply toward epigenetic medicines that could offer advantages over other editing technologies. Other recent financings include rounds from Cargo Therapeutics and Transcend Therapeutics.

Hemab Therapeutics will apply its Series B financing toward clinical development of its lead drug candidate, a potential treatment for Glanzmann thrombasthenia. The capital will also support the rest its pipeline addressing rare bleeding and thrombotic diseases with no approved therapies.

Chiesi drug Lamzede is an engineered version of an enzyme that’s lacking in patients with the rare disease alpha-mannosidosis. FDA approval of the Chiesi drug comes about five years after European regulators authorized the product.

Karuna Therapeutics has licensed two small molecules that shuttering Goldfinch Bio had developed for kidney disorders. These compounds target a pathway that could also treat neurological disorders, giving clinical-stage Karuna the opportunity to compete against a drug candidate from Boehringer Ingelheim.

Elicio Therapeutics dipped its toe in the IPO waters but decided to go public by merging with publicly traded Angion Biomedica. Clinical-stage Elicio is developing immunotherapies, including cancer vaccines, that work by targeting immune cells located in the lymph nodes.

In rejecting Spectrum Pharmaceuticals drug poziotinib, the FDA said the biotech needs to generate more data from another clinical trial. Instead, Spectrum is turning the company’s focus to commercializing its recently approved product for treating a common cancer complication.

Ascidian Therapeutics is developing therapies for inherited disorders that work by editing RNA with an approach that could offer advantages over currently available genetic medicines. The biotech’s lead program is in preclinical development for Stargardt disease, a rare eye disorder caused by multiple genetic mutations.

Merck is paying $25 million to kick off a research partnership with Cerevance, a startup that analyzes donor brain tissue to find novel targets for new neurological disorder drugs. While Cerevance’s lead program is a Parkinson’s disease drug, Merck is wants to see if the startup’s technology can help it discover and develop new Alzheimer’s disease drugs.

Pear Therapeutics is implementing a corporate restructuring projected to save about $28 million. The goal is to extend its available cash as the company presses on with commercialization efforts for its digital therapeutics.

Technological advances are moving drug discovery work to computers, but experimental medicines still must be tested in animals. Startup Manifold Bio is developing technology that enables the testing of hundreds of molecules in a single mouse, bringing drug hunters valuable in vivo data much earlier in the drug discovery process.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals already has a cell therapy candidate for type 1 diabetes but the company says acquiring rival ViaCyte will provide it with complementary assets and technologies. The two companies already share a partner in common: both have therapeutic candidates that use the gene-editing capabilities of CRISPR Therapeutics.

Two private equity firms have reached an $890 million deal to buy Radius Health, a company whose main asset is the commercialized osteoporosis drug Tymlos. In other M&A news, cancer biotech F-star Therapeutics is being acquired in a $161 million deal.

Cell and gene therapy research has been hot the past few years but the overall market has cooled down in recent months. During the World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston, a panel of venture capitalists discussed capital formation and what biotech firms need to do to win over investors and advance their research.

As an oncologist, Kristen Hege first encountered cancer cell therapy research in the mid-1990s. Now as a Bristol Myers Squibb executive, she oversees efforts to improve the pharma giant’s first generation of cell therapies while also building a pipeline of next-generation treatments with better features and properties.

CAR T cell therapies for cancer still pose challenges in manufacturing, safety, and the ability to address solid tumors. A panel at the World Medical Innovation Forum discussed efforts to improve CAR T as well as new approaches for the next generation of cell therapies.

Takeda Pharmaceutical spinout HilleVax broke the biotech IPO drought with a $200 million stock market debut for clinical development of a norovirus vaccine. Two eye health companies marked the other IPO activity: Belite Bio went public while Bausch + Lomb set financial terms for what could become one of the biggest IPOs of the year.

The Series D round of funding makes Biofourmis a unicorn valued at $1.3 billion. CEO and founder Kuldeep Singh Rajput said that the new capital will be used to expand his company’s remote-monitoring technologies and continue development of digital therapeutics, both as companions to traditional drugs and as monotherapies.

Versant Ventures has launched Cimeio Therapeutics, a biotech startup with technology that can shield transplanted stem cells or cell therapies. Shielding these cells enables them to be dosed alongside an immunotherapy—an approach that is not currently done because the therapies don’t discriminate between diseased cells and transplanted ones.

The lead drug candidate of Imara failed two separate mid-stage clinical trials evaluating it in rare, inherited hemoglobin disorders. Imara had been planning to advance the small molecule to yet another Phase 2 study in heart failure, but in light of the twin trial failures, the biotech is now weighing “strategic options.”

Affini-T Therapeutics is developing new cell therapies for cancer that could overcome limitations of the first generation of cell therapies. The initial genomic cancer targets of the startup are mutations of KRAS and p53, both of which have proven difficult to drug.