US approval for its hypoglycemia injection Zegalogue last year has not been converted into commercial success. Zealand will be hoping that having diabetes giant Novo Nordisk onboard will put that right.

Restructuring Updates: Homology implemented modest job cuts as it ended a gene therapy trial, while ProQR revealed its second round of layoffs this year and Synthetic Biologics shifted focus to oncolytic virus pipeline. Also, Bolt, MacroGenics and others deprioritized programs in their Q2 updates.

During Q2, biopharma merger and acquisition value reached $25.4bn and drew in $27.3bn in potential deal value from alliances. Device company M&A values reached $2.7bn, while in vitro diagnostic firms and research tools players completed M&A activity that totaled $534.3m.

Following ABL Bio’s sizable Parkinson’s disease drug deal with Sanofi early this year, Korean bioventure Kainos Medicine is under the spotlight as its novel PD drug candidate enters Phase II in the US.