When almost everything that could go wrong has gone wrong at a company, the proposition of it turning acquirer may meet with some resistance from its proposed targets and their investors.

The pharma, biotech and allied industries came back together in London on 2 December to celebrate a year of exceptional achievement at the 17th Annual Scrip Awards, hosted by the journalist and broadcaster Amol Rajan.

This week's roundup includes Almirall's appointment of a former Sanofi employee as CEO and various other high-level appointments by Axial, Therachon, Theranexus and Karolinska.

Quartet Medicine Inc.'s pipeline of novel small-molecule drugs to address chronic pain and inflammation target the tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) synthesis pathway, a target with genetic and pharmacological links to regulating human disease at the intersection of the peripheral nervous system and the immune system. The start-up thinks its approach has the potential to provide improved efficacy without the side effects associated with existing centrally acting analgesics.