Ex­elix­is is dol­ing out $25 mil­lion to snag rights to choose three tar­gets found by BioIn­vent.

The Cal­i­for­nia can­cer drug­mak­er is link­ing arms with the Swedish biotech — both found­ed in the mid 90s — to ex­pand its suite of an­ti­bod­ies for im­muno-on­col­o­gy. BioIn­vent will of­fer up its can­cer im­munol­o­gy and an­ti­body bi­ol­o­gy chops and Ex­elix­is will bring its an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate tech to the ta­ble.

BioIn­vent will use its so-called n-CoDeR an­ti­body li­brary and screen­ing plat­form to find the three yet-dis­closed tar­gets. The Lund, Swe­den biotech will be re­spon­si­ble for char­ac­ter­iz­ing the an­ti­bod­ies’ mech­a­nism of ac­tion, and then Ex­elix­is has the right to in-li­cense de­vel­op­ment can­di­dates di­rect­ed to those tar­gets.

Op­tion ex­er­cise fees and mile­stones are po­ten­tial­ly on deck for BioIn­vent. Tiered roy­al­ties, too, if any prod­ucts make it to mar­ket. Ex­elix­is has ex­pe­ri­ence on that front, with mul­ti­ple ap­proved ther­a­pies, in­clud­ing Cometriq, Cotel­lic and Cabome­tyx.

“Ex­elix­is has a demon­strat­ed track record of suc­cess in both com­mer­cial­iz­ing im­por­tant new on­col­o­gy med­i­cines and es­tab­lish­ing high­ly pro­duc­tive col­lab­o­ra­tions that in­te­grate di­verse and com­ple­men­tary skill sets and tech­nolo­gies — such as tox­in and cy­tokine con­ju­ga­tion of mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies for ADC and bis­pe­cif­ic mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body tech­nolo­gies — to en­able the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment of in­no­v­a­tive ther­a­pies with sig­nif­i­cant clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial po­ten­tial,” BioIn­vent CEO Mar­tin Welschof said in a state­ment.

Ex­elix­is’ new part­ner has inked a slate of deals over its 26-year his­to­ry. BioIn­vent’s biotech bud­dies in­clude a po­ten­tial­ly $500 mil­lion col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pfiz­er, a 50/50 sol­id tu­mor pro­gram with Trans­gene, an ex­clu­sive li­cense with CASI Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to take its ear­ly-stage can­cer drug to Chi­na, tri­al agree­ments to test Mer­ck’s Keytru­da in com­bo stud­ies, an an­ti­body deal with Bay­er Health­care and oth­er an­ti­body dis­cov­ery part­ners.

Al­so on Thurs­day, BioIn­vent’s nom­i­na­tion com­mit­tee pro­posed adding Na­tal­ie Bern­er and Nan­na Lüneborg to the board. Bern­er is a man­ag­ing part­ner at BioIn­vent’s largest share­hold­er, Red­mile Group, and Lüneborg is a gen­er­al part­ner at For­bion, now a 5% share­hold­er of the biotech, as of ear­li­er this month.

Astellas and Sutro Biopharma are linking arms on a new field of antibody-drug conjugates that they hope will improve upon existing cancer immunotherapies.

The Tokyo pharma will dole out $90 million in cash for the collaboration, the companies said Monday afternoon. That upfront payment will extend the South San Francisco biotech’s runway from late 2023 into the first half of 2024, Cowen analysts noted.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Though Decibel Therapeutics has largely pivoted toward gene therapies for the inner ear, its lead clinical candidate simply aims to protect cancer patients from chemotherapy-induced hearing loss. On Tuesday, the biotech presented its first efficacy data for the program, and execs like what they see.

Decibel reported interim results from a Phase Ib study showing the experimental drug, dubbed DB-020, largely protected a small group of patients from losing their hearing. Researchers used a particularly unique study design, administering the compound in one of each patients’ ears before they received cisplatin chemotherapy and placebo in the other.