The French meta­bol­ic ex­perts at Pox­el have re­versed course on their planned so­lo de­vel­op­ment mis­sion in Japan, lin­ing up an Asian part­ner for their late-stage di­a­betes drug imeglim­in.

Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon Phar­ma stepped up with a $42 mil­lion up­front, with promis­es of $24 mil­lion more for de­vel­op­ment mile­stones and about $233 mil­lion for hit­ting a slate of sales goals. In ex­change they land mar­ket­ing and de­vel­op­ment rights — they’ll be pay­ing for the Phase III — in Chi­na, Japan and oth­er key Asian coun­tries.

Thomas Kuhn

Back in May, though, Pox­el CEO Thomas Kuhn told me the biotech was plan­ning to go at Phase III in Japan all by it­self, a rare feat in the di­a­betes world, where a few key gi­ants dom­i­nate the glob­al land­scape for a dis­ease that has claimed mil­lions of pa­tients.

In­vestors didn’t mind, though, send­ing Pox­el’s shares (EPA: $POX­EL) rock­et­ing up 43%.

The Mer­ck Serono spin­out had ini­tial­ly fig­ured that it could pull off a Phase III pro­gram in Japan with 1,000 pa­tients, far few­er than what would nor­mal­ly be ex­pect­ed. Pox­el is styling imeglim­in as a mi­to­chon­dr­i­al ther­a­py that could pro­tect be­ta cells, mak­ing it a good po­ten­tial add-on. Its shares rock­et­ed up 40% last May af­ter a Phase IIb tri­al in Japan reg­is­tered he­mo­glo­bin A1c re­duc­tions of 0.52%, 0.94% and 1.00% for the 500 mg, 1000 mg and 1500 mg dose twice-dai­ly.

“Giv­en imeglim­in’s unique pro­file and nov­el mech­a­nism of ac­tion, which we be­lieve is well-suit­ed for Asian pa­tients, it has the po­ten­tial to be a very im­por­tant new oral ther­a­py for the treat­ment of type 2 di­a­betes. With their very long and suc­cess­ful his­to­ry of com­mer­cial­iz­ing di­a­betes prod­ucts and as a leader in this re­gion with a ded­i­cat­ed fran­chise, Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon Phar­ma will be an ex­cel­lent part­ner for imeglim­in in Asia,” said Kuhn in a state­ment. “Our near-term fo­cus in Japan is to ini­ti­ate the Phase III pro­gram and to work close­ly with Sum­it­o­mo Dainip­pon Phar­ma to sup­port the Japan­ese New Drug Ap­pli­ca­tion sub­mis­sion.”

Blue­bird bio $BLUE chief Nick Leschly court­ed con­tro­ver­sy last week when he re­vealed the com­pa­ny’s be­ta tha­lassemia treat­ment will car­ry a jaw-drop­ping $1.8 mil­lion price tag over a 5 year pe­ri­od in the Unit­ed States — mak­ing it the plan­et’s sec­ond most ex­pen­sive ther­a­py be­hind No­var­tis’ $NVS fresh­ly ap­proved spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy ther­a­py, Zol­gens­ma at $2.1 mil­lion. A Chica­go biotech, mean­while, has been fum­ing at the side­lines. In a law­suit filed ear­li­er this month, Er­rant Gene Ther­a­peu­tics al­leged that blue­bird and ven­ture cap­i­tal group Third Rock un­law­ful­ly prised a vi­ral vec­tor, de­vel­oped in part­ner­ship with the Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing (MSK), from its grasp, and thwart­ed the de­vel­op­ment of its sem­i­nal gene ther­a­py.

→  Rare dis­ease play­er Ul­tragenyx $RARE is ex­pand­ing its al­liance with Arc­turus $ARCT, pay­ing $24 mil­lion for eq­ui­ty and an­oth­er $6 mil­lion in an up­front as the two part­ners ex­pand their col­lab­o­ra­tion to in­clude up to 12 tar­gets. “This ex­pand­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion fur­ther so­lid­i­fies our mR­NA plat­form by adding ad­di­tion­al tar­gets and ex­pand­ing our abil­i­ty to po­ten­tial­ly treat more dis­eases,” said Emil Kakkis, the CEO at Ul­tragenyx. “We are pleased with the progress of our on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion. Our most ad­vanced mR­NA pro­gram, UX053 for the treat­ment of Glyco­gen Stor­age Dis­ease Type III, is ex­pect­ed to move in­to the clin­ic next year, and we look for­ward to fur­ther build­ing up­on the ini­tial suc­cess of this part­ner­ship.”

The shock of Neil Wood­ford’s de­ci­sion to block with­drawals for his flag­ship fund is still rip­pling through the rest of his port­fo­lio — and be­yond. Un­der po­lit­i­cal pres­sure, UK fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tors are now tak­ing a hard look while in­vestors con­tin­ue to flee.

In a re­sponse let­ter to an MP, the Fi­nan­cial Con­duct Au­thor­i­ty re­vealed that it’s opened an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the sus­pen­sion fol­low­ing months of en­gage­ment with Link Fund So­lu­tions, which tech­ni­cal­ly del­e­gat­ed Wood­ford’s firm to man­age its funds.

Gilead is jump­ing on board the pro­tein degra­da­tion band­wag­on. And they’re turn­ing to a low-pro­file Third Rock start­up for the ex­per­tise. But if you were look­ing for a trans­for­ma­tion­al deal to kick up fresh en­thu­si­asm for Gilead, you’ll have to re­main pa­tient.

This one will have a long way to go be­fore they get in­to the clin­ic.

The big biotech said Wednes­day morn­ing that it is pay­ing $45 mil­lion up­front and re­serv­ing a whop­ping $2.3 bil­lion in biotech bucks if San Fran­cis­co-based Nurix can point the way to new can­cer ther­a­pies, as well as drugs for oth­er, un­spec­i­fied dis­eases.

Mer­ck’s re­cent deals to buy up two bolt-on biotechs — Ti­los and Pelo­ton — weren’t an aber­ra­tion. In­stead, both ac­qui­si­tions mark a new strat­e­gy to beef up its dom­i­nant can­cer drug op­er­a­tions cen­tered on Keytru­da while look­ing to ad­dress grow­ing con­cerns that too many of its eggs are in the one I/O bas­ket for their PD-1 pro­gram. And Mer­ck is go­ing af­ter more small- and mid-sized buy­outs to calm those fears.

Health and tech ven­ture group Po­laris Part­ners, which counts Alec­tor, Al­ny­lam and Ed­i­tas Med­i­cine as part of its port­fo­lio, is set­ting up its ninth fund, rough­ly two years af­ter it closed Po­laris VI­II with $435 mil­lion in the bank, sur­pass­ing its tar­get by $35 mil­lion.

The Boston-based firm, in an SEC fil­ing, said it in­tends to raise $400 mil­lion for the fund. Po­laris — which rou­tine­ly backs com­pa­nies mold­ed out of the work done in the lab of pro­lif­ic sci­en­tist Bob Langer of MIT  — typ­i­cal­ly in­vests ear­ly, and sticks around till com­pa­nies are in the green. Like its peers at Flag­ship and Third Rock, Po­laris is all about cham­pi­oning the lo­cal biotech scene with a steady flow of start­up cash.