The Danish diabetes titan teams with Moderna’s founder on cardiometabolic R&D. Troubled cell therapy biotech Bone Therapeutics negotiates reverse merger with Medsenic.

Argenx partners with Elektrofi and Iontas; China’s Qilu obtains global rights to Peptron’s antibody-drug conjugate and also ends co-development pact with Quantum Genomics.

Private Company Edition: The Alliance for Regenerative Medicine’s half-year report shows the sector raised $10.7bn in the first half of 2020 versus $9.8bn raised in all of 2019. Also, DCVC Bio closed a $350m fund, new incubator opportunities and VC mega-deals for Dyne and Atomwise.

While liquid biopsy is becoming routine for cancer treatment stratification and monitoring, using blood tests to screen for early cancer in asymptomatic people remains a tantalizing target. Some question how practical such a test could be but several companies are already en route - some further down the road than others - to achieve this goal. Illumina spin-out Grail is one of these companies and while it is not alone, in a field where size matters, it may have an advantage. This article delves deeper into how these different technologies work and when they could reach the market.