→ Daré Bio­science is the lat­est biotech to pull off a re­verse merg­er. The com­pa­ny is tak­ing over Cerulean, leav­ing it with a ma­jor­i­ty of the stock and a list­ing on Nas­daq for its women’s health ef­fort. Cerulean, mean­while, sold CR­LX101 and CR­LX301 to a sub­sidiary of NewLink and laid off 11 staffers, leav­ing 8 em­ploy­ees. Last sum­mer Cerulean’s lead drug went 0 for 2 in mid-stage tri­als, blast­ing any re­main­ing hope of suc­cess and forc­ing the com­pa­ny to lay off half of its staff.

→ The UK’s Pul­mo­cide has raised a $30.4 mil­lion B round. The mon­ey will be ear­marked for its R&D work on a new ther­a­py for RSV as well as pul­monary as­pergillo­sis. New in­vestor SR One led the round in a syn­di­cate that in­clud­ed Long­wood Fund plus ex­ist­ing in­vestors SV Life Sci­ences, F-Prime Cap­i­tal, John­son & John­son In­no­va­tion – JJDC, Inc. and Touch­stone In­no­va­tions plc. “This Se­ries B fundrais­ing will pro­vide us with the cap­i­tal to ad­vance our two nov­el com­pounds through ear­ly clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment; an­oth­er step clos­er to a treat­ment for pa­tients for these de­bil­i­tat­ing in­fec­tions,” said CEO Garth Rape­port.

→ Waltham, MA-based X-Chem has forged a drug dis­cov­ery col­lab­o­ra­tion with Astel­las Phar­ma, bag­ging a $16 mil­lion up­front. Mile­stone pay­ments range up to $100 mil­lion on each pro­gram.

→ France’s AB Sci­ences saw its shares bounce high­er this morn­ing af­ter an­nounc­ing that a Phase II/III study of ma­sitinib hit the pri­ma­ry end­point for ALS. The com­pa­ny, though, has some cred­i­bil­i­ty is­sues af­ter the EMA re­ject­ed a pair of can­cer ap­pli­ca­tions for the same drug, cit­ing prob­lems with the tri­als used to gath­er da­ta.

Let the long battle for biosimilars in the cancer space begin.

Amgen has launched its Avastin and Herceptin copycats — licensed from the predecessors of Allergan — almost two years after the FDA had stamped its approval on Mvasi (bevacizumab-awwb) and three months after the Kanjinti OK (trastuzumab-anns). While the biotech had been fielding biosimilars in Europe, this marks their first foray in the US — and the first oncology biosimilars in the country.

→ On the same day it announced a $17.5 million Series C, life sciences and health data company Seer unveiled that it had lured former FDA commissioner and ex-CMS administrator Mark McClellan on to its board. “Mark’s deep understanding of the health care ecosystem and visionary insights on policy reform will be crucial in informing our thinking as we work to bring our liquid biopsy and life sciences products to market,” said Seer chief and founder Omid Farokhzad in a statement.

Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day’s new task hunting up a CSO for the company isn’t stopping the industry’s dominant antiviral player from doing pipeline deals.

The big biotech today snapped up 3 preclinical antiviral programs from pharma giant Novartis, with drugs promising to treat human rhinovirus, influenza and herpes viruses. We don’t know what the upfront is, but the back end has $291 million in milestones baked in.

Servier is walking out on a partnership with MacroGenics $MGNX — for the second time.

After the market closed on Wednesday MacroGenics put out word that Servier is severing a deal — inked close to 7 years ago — to collaborate on the development of flotetuzumab and other Dual-Affinity Re-Targeting (DART) drugs in its pipeline.

MacroGenics CEO Scott Koenig shrugged off the departure of Servier, which paid $20 million to kick off the alliance and $20 million to option flotetuzumab — putting a heavily back-ended $1 billion-plus in additional biobuck money on the table for the anti-CD123/CD3 bispecific and its companion therapies.