→ 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.

A plant located in Wrexham, Wales that is packing the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine into vials was surrounded by a bomb squad after officials called police to report a suspicious package.

The alert caused a partial evacuation of the plant, the BBC was among those to report Wednesday. The owner of the plant, British drugmaker Wockhardt UK, said it was cooperating with local authorities and that there were no reports of any injuries.

Hours before President Biden’s Covid-19 team gave their first virtual press conference, the famed AIDS researcher David Ho delivered concerning news in a new pre-print: SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351, the variant that emerged in South Africa, is “markedly more resistant” to antibodies from convalescent plasma and vaccinated individuals.

The news for several monoclonal antibodies, including Eli Lilly’s bamlanivimab, was even worse: Their ability to neutralize was “completely or markedly abolished,” Ho wrote. Lilly’s antibody cocktail, which was just shown to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalizations or death, also became far less potent.

Psychedelics have made a comeback for mental health research, with companies like startup biotech ATAI Life Sciences raising millions and earning the backing of prominent investors like Peter Thiel, but there’s a hole at the heart of the resurgence: Researchers still don’t fully understand how they work.

A new partnership between ATAI and world-renowned Mass General Hospital hopes to change that.