→ 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.

→ Merck — one of the last big pharma bastions in the beleaguered field of antibiotic drug development — on Friday said the FDA had signed off on using its combination drug, Recarbrio, with hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia. The drug could come handy for use in hospitalized patients who are afflicted with Covid-19, who carry a higher risk of contracting secondary bacterial infections. Once SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid-19, infects the airways, it engages the immune system, giving other pathogens free rein to pillage and plunder as they please — the issue is particularly pertinent in patients on ventilators, which in any case are breeding grounds for infectious bacteria.

In a bewildering twist to the long-suffering market for antibiotics — there has actually been a bidding war for an antibiotic company: Tetraphase.

It all started back in March, when the maker of Xerava (an FDA approved therapy for complicated intra-abdominal infections) said it had received an offer from AcelRx for an all-stock deal valued at $14.4 million.

The offer was well-timed. Xerava was approved in 2018, four years after Tetraphase posted its first batch of pivotal trial data, and sales were nowhere near where they needed to be in order for the company to keep its head above water.

Lonza chairman Albert Baehny took his time headhunting a new CEO for the company, making it absolutely clear he wanted a Big Pharma or biotech CEO with a good long track record in the business for the top spot. In the end, he went with the gold standard, turning to Roche’s ranks to recruit Pierre-Alain Ruffieux for the job.

Ruffieux, a member of the pharma leadership team at Roche, spent close to 5 years at the company. But like a small army of manufacturing execs, he gained much of his experience at the other Big Pharma in Basel, remaining at Novartis for 12 years before expanding his horizons.

Another Big Pharma is entering the Covid-19 antibody hunt.

AbbVie has announced a collaboration with the Netherlands’ Utrecht University and Erasmus Medical Center and the Chinese-Dutch biotech Harbour Biomed to develop a neutralizing antibody that can treat Covid-19. The antibody, called 47D11, was discovered by AbbVie’s three partners, and AbbVie will support early preclinical work, while preparing for later preclinical and clinical development. Researchers described the antibody in Nature Communications last month.

A month after word first broke of the Trump Administration’s plan to rapidly accelerate the development and production of a Covid-19 vaccine, the White House has selected the five vaccine candidates they consider most likely to succeed, The New York Times reported.

Most of the names in the plan, known as Operation Warp Speed, will come as little surprise to those who have watched the last four months of vaccine developments: Moderna, which was the first vaccine to reach humans and is now the furthest along of any US effort; J&J, which has not gone into trials but received around $500 million in funding from BARDA earlier this year; the joint AstraZeneca-Oxford venture which was granted $1.2 billion from BARDA two weeks ago; Pfizer, which has been working with the mRNA biotech BioNTech; and Merck, which just entered the race and expects to put their two vaccine candidates into humans later this year.

Money has never been an issue for Everest Medicines. With an essentially open tab from their founders at C-Bridge Capital, the biotech has gone two and a half years racking up drug after drug, bringing in top exec after top exec, and issuing clinical update after update.

But now other investors want in — and they’re betting big.

Everest is closing its Series C at $310 million. The first $50 million comes from the Jiashan National Economic and Technological Development Zone; the remaining C-2 tranche was led by Janchor Partners, with RA Capital Management and Hillhouse Capital as co-leaders. Decheng Capital, GT Fund, Janus Henderson Investors, Rock Springs Capital, Octagon Investments all joined.