No­var­tis is send­ing two more of its on­col­o­gy castoffs to a Chi­na biotech.

The phar­ma gi­ant has out-li­censed glob­al rights to two of its can­cer drugs — the AKT in­hibitors afure­sert­ib and up­ros­ert­ib — to the Shang­hai-based com­pa­ny Laek­na. No­var­tis, in turn, picked them up in its big swap with GSK a few years ago, hand­ing over vac­cines in ex­change for GSK’s late-stage can­cer pipeline and prod­ucts.

The com­pa­nies did not dis­close the terms.

This isn’t their first deal. No­var­tis hand­ed over a CYP17 in­hibitor (CFG920), an oral an­dro­gen in­hibitor to treat prostate can­cer, in a pact they struck with the Chi­nese com­pa­ny last year. 

Just days ago, No­var­tis al­so out-li­censed glob­al rights to a can­cer drug with a trou­bling his­to­ry. Ad­lai Nortye, based in Hangzhou, picked up their PI3K drug bu­parlis­ib — af­ter a group of sci­en­tists pub­lished a re­port in The Lancet that con­clud­ed the drug’s safe­ty pro­file “does not sup­port its fur­ther de­vel­op­ment” in breast can­cer. 

Chi­nese com­pa­nies have been scoop­ing up re­gion­al and glob­al rights to all the drugs they can lay their hands on. And No­var­tis ev­i­dent­ly likes to fa­cil­i­tate the trend with its own un­want­ed as­sets.

Belgian biotech Confo Therapeutics has landed $183 million, plus potential royalties, in a drug-discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo.

Early Thursday, Confo Therapeutics put out word of the deal that will be focused on small molecule antagonists to go after an undisclosed target that the company says is associated with CNS diseases.

Confo CEO Cedric Ververken told Endpoints News that Daiichi originally reached out to learn about the biotech’s technology. He added that Confo, founded in 2015, will use its platform to drug a GPCR target that Daiichi has struggled with internally.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.