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April 2019 was perhaps remarkable for the amount of industry news about gene therapy, and notably the announcement by a global contract development and manufacturing organization, Catalent, that it was creating a capability in gene therapy product development and manufacturing through its acquisition of Paragon Bioservices, Inc (MD, USA). This move followed just a few weeks after another similar major contract development and manufacturing organization gene therapy acquisition. There was other encouraging gene and cell therapy news reported from AveXis (IL, USA), Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma (CA, USA), Kiadis Pharma (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Fibrocell (PA, USA), Autolus Therapeutics plc (London, UK), ReNeuron (Surrey, England) and Kite Pharma (CA, USA). Also, there was plenty of therapeutic delivery technology innovation announced, including Calixar’s (Lyon, France) membrane protein stabilization drug discovery technology, the Eli Lilly (IN, USA)/Avidity Biosciences LLC (CA, USA) deal around antibody oligonucleotide conjugates, ViiV Healthcare’s regulatory filing for its long-acting anti-HIV-1 intramuscular injection, Marinomed Biotech’s (Vienna, Austria) solubilization technology and an EU approval filing for Novo Nordisk’s (Bagsværd, Denmark) oral delivery formulation of glucagon-like peptide-1 analog semaglutide. Diseases and treatment approaches that currently figure strongly in many biotech and big pharma pipelines and portfolios, notably nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and immuno-oncology, were as ever in the news, along with a number of rare disease therapies. As always, information sources employed to provide the materials used in compiling this update included company press releases, conference news and other news websites.

1–31 December 2018, the period covered by this article, was again a very interesting period for activity under the therapeutic delivery umbrella, being a particularly solid month for business activity, notably a major acquisition by GSK to expand its oncology portfolio. This was, as it later turns out, the first of several very significant mergers and acquisitions around the turn of the year in the oncology area, more of which will appear in future articles. In that acquisition, the acquisition of Potenza Therapeutics (MA, USA) by Astellas Pharma Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), Amgen's (CA, USA) collaboration with Molecular Partners (Zurich, Switzerland), the partnership between Domain Therapeutics (Strasbourg, France) and Boehringer Ingelheim (Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany), and the deal between Argenx (Breda, The Netherlands) and Cilag GmbH International (Zug, Switzerland), all announced in the month, demonstrated the high continued interest within industry around the development of immuno-oncology therapeutics. Additionally, activity around therapeutic delivery technologies was prominent in the news, for example the Amgen/Entera Bio (Jerusalem, Israel) deal around oral delivery of large molecules, Entrada Therapeutic's (MA, USA) successful acquisition of funding to advance its work on intracellular delivery of biologics, Impel NeuroPharma's (WA, USA) securing of support continue its development of its nose-to-brain delivery pipeline, US FDA approval of inhaled levodopa from Acorda Therapeutics Inc. (NY, USA) and a sublingual delivery technology for dexmedetomidine under development by BioXcel Therapeutics (CT, USA) being advanced into clinical evaluation were just some of the items noted. As always, information sources employed to provide the materials used in compiling this update included company press releases, conference news and other news websites.