As Astellas pivots through several candidates in an attempt to create its next blockbuster, a decision to terminate its only prospect in the core mitochondrial R&D area leaves very few other competitors in the market.

Plus transactions involving Nissan Chemical/Sanwa Kagaku, Memel/Therabest, Chugai/Alnylam, Takeda/Kumquat, Nxera/Handok, 3SBio/CStone and deals in brief.

Advances in synthetic biology are moving biopharma closer to a world where treatments can be tailored while remaining cost-effective.

The new tool provides a way of quantifying the degree of diversity by race/ethnicity, sex and age in clinical trials, but the results will not factor into the US health technology assessment body’s cost effectiveness determinations for new drugs.