While an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates have had their mo­ment in the sun for the past few years, a de­grad­er twist on the hot can­cer modal­i­ty is gath­er­ing steam.

Roche is fur­ther delv­ing in­to its decade-long part­ner­ship with C4 Ther­a­peu­tics in a new col­lab­o­ra­tion that seeks to cre­ate de­grad­er-an­ti­body con­ju­gates, or DACs, for treat­ing can­cers. The ex­pand­ed tie-up, dis­closed Thurs­day morn­ing, in­cludes $20 mil­lion up­front and the po­ten­tial for about $1 bil­lion if var­i­ous mile­stones are hit across dis­cov­ery, de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial stages.

DACs have at­tract­ed a few large drug­mak­ers, in­clud­ing one this week. Al­though the bulk of Gilead­'s $3.15 bil­lion at­ten­tion on Tubu­lis ear­li­er this week was like­ly geared to­ward the Ger­man star­tup's two clin­i­cal-stage AD­Cs, a pre­clin­i­cal DAC could rise to the fore in the com­ing years. Bris­tol My­ers Squibb is al­so in the game, and pro­tein de­grad­er leg­end Craig Crews is cook­ing up his next start­up.

A for­mer As­traZeneca sci­en­tist is join­ing Ailux, a lit­tle-known Shang­hai-based up­start that has grown in­to a lead­ing force in Chi­na's AI-fo­cused biotech in­dus­try.

Ailux has hired Maria Belvisi as its chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer, End­points News ex­clu­sive­ly re­ports. Belvisi was most re­cent­ly As­traZeneca's se­nior vice pres­i­dent of res­pi­ra­to­ry and im­munol­o­gy in bio­phar­ma R&D, where she over­saw a team of about 500 sci­en­tists. She will help shape Ailux's pipeline, as the biotech ex­pects its first three IND fil­ings in 2027.

Ailux start­ed in 2021 as a sub­sidiary of XtalPi, an AI-for-sci­ence com­pa­ny in Chi­na now val­ued at $5.46 bil­lion. So far, XtalPi has sin­gle-hand­ed­ly bankrolled the com­pa­ny, but Ailux CEO Alex Li said he plans to kick off its first ex­ter­nal fundraise next month, aim­ing to fin­ish the round by the end of the third quar­ter. He de­clined to dis­close a tar­get size or val­u­a­tion for the raise, but said "we're pay­ing close at­ten­tion to what oth­er com­pa­nies have raised in this space."

Plus, news about Boston On­col­o­gy, Gar­da and As­ser­tio, an Ever­est deal and Forte's raise:

🟢 FDA ends par­tial hold on Macro­Gen­ics can­cer drug: In Feb­ru­ary, the agency stopped a Phase 2 tri­al of loriger­limab af­ter one pa­tient died and three oth­ers ex­pe­ri­enced life-threat­en­ing side ef­fects. The drug is a bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body that tar­gets PD-1 and CT­LA-4 in cer­tain forms of ovar­i­an and gy­ne­co­log­i­cal can­cers. Macro­Gen­ics said it has im­ple­ment­ed a “re­vised pro­to­col” to en­roll new pa­tients to try to pre­vent ad­di­tion­al “hema­to­log­ic and car­diac tox­i­c­i­ties," and said the reg­u­la­tor will let the tri­al con­tin­ue. — Max Gel­man

🤝 Ox­ford Bio­Ther­a­peu­tics se­cures third big phar­ma pact: The UK biotech signed a col­lab­o­ra­tion deal with Bris­tol My­ers Squibb to de­vel­op next-gen­er­a­tion T cell en­gagers for sol­id tu­mors. Ox­ford will use its OGAP-Ver­i­fy plat­form for dis­cov­ery and val­i­da­tion pur­pos­es. Fi­nan­cial terms weren't dis­closed. The com­pa­ny has pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced deals with GSK and Roche. — Ay­isha Shar­ma

A biotech de­vel­op­ing in­haled for­mu­la­tions of ap­proved pul­monary fi­bro­sis pills wants to tap the pub­lic mar­kets to fund its late-stage work.

Ava­lyn Phar­ma sub­mit­ted its pitch on Wednes­day night for a Nas­daq list­ing un­der the tick­er AVLN. The Boston-based biotech did­n't say how much it seeks to raise, and com­pa­nies typ­i­cal­ly lay out those goals af­ter a pe­ri­od of mar­ket­ing to in­vestors to feel out de­mand.

The fil­ing comes two weeks af­ter obe­si­ty biotech Kail­era Ther­a­peu­tics an­nounced its own IPO. Half a dozen drug de­vel­op­ers went pub­lic in the US ear­li­er this win­ter to mixed re­sults.

The start­up said it hopes an IPO will raise enough cash to help it take two med­i­cines in­to Phase 3. For now, the com­pa­