On April 16, 2026 Adlai Nortye Ltd. (Nasdaq: ANL) (the "Company" or "Adlai Nortye"), a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative cancer therapies, reported that it has entered into a securities purchase agreement for a private investment in public equity financing that is expected to result in gross proceeds of approximately $150.0 million, before deducting placement agent fees and other private placement expenses.

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The oversubscribed transaction includes participation from both new and existing institutional investors. New investors include Soleus Capital, Perceptive Advisors, ADAR1 Capital Management, MPM BioImpact, Octagon Capital, Eventide Asset Management and Kalehua Capital, DAFNA Capital Management, etc., with additional participation from existing investors including Cormorant Asset Management, Columbia Threadneedle Investments, Balyasny Asset Management, Casdin Capital and Squadron Capital Management, Superstring Capital Management, etc.

In the private placement, the Company is selling 11,320,755 ADSs, at a price of $13.25 per ADS, which equals the closing price of the Company’s ADSs on the Nasdaq Global Market on April 15, 2026. The private placement is expected to close on April 17, 2026, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Carsten Lu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Adlai Nortye, said, "We are delighted to have brought together this group of high-quality healthcare investors to support Adlai Nortye and our innovative, potentially best-in-class RAS-targeting therapies. We thank our investors for their confidence in the broad potential of our RAS-targeting pipeline and our next-generation ADC payload platform, RASiCA, as well as their commitment to our mission to transform deadly cancer into a chronic and eventually curable disease."

Leerink Partners, Cantor, Lucid Capital Markets, H.C. Wainwright & Co. and Jones are acting as joint placement agents for the private placement.

The securities being issued and sold in this private placement have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or applicable state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an effective registration statement or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. Adlai Nortye has agreed to file a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission registering the resale of the ADSs issued in the private placement.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities described herein, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

(Press release, Adlai Nortye Biopharma, APR 16, 2026, View Source [SID1234664462])

On April 16, 2026 Blacksmith Medicines, Inc. (Blacksmith), a leading biopharma dedicated to discovering and developing therapeutics targeting metalloenzymes, reported the company will present data on its oncology program targeting flap endonuclease 1 (FEN1), a structure-specific metallonuclease that cleaves 5′ DNA flaps during replication and repair, at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting 2026, taking place April 17-22 at the San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA.

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Details of the poster presentation are as follows:

Abstract Number: 234
Title: "Proteomic profiling of FEN1 inhibition by BSM-1516 reveals chromatin-associated biomarkers for preclinical pharmacodynamic evaluation"
Session Title: DNA Damage and Repair 1
Session Date and Time: Sunday April 19, 2026 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: Poster Section 11
Poster Board Number: 5

The abstract is now available on the conference website at AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting 2026.

About FEN1
Flap endonuclease 1 (FEN1) is a structure-specific di-magnesium metallonuclease that cleaves 5′ DNA flaps during replication and repair. FEN1 is an attractive target for development of anticancer therapeutics because it is overexpressed in many tumor types and has a large number of synthetic lethality partners including genes in Homologous Recombination (HR) pathway.

About metalloenzymes and the Blacksmith platform
Metalloenzymes rely on metal ion cofactors within their active sites to perform critical biological functions. Historically, these targets have been challenging to drug due to limitations in small-molecule chemistry. The Blacksmith platform addresses these challenges through:

A proprietary fragment library of metal-binding pharmacophores (MBPs);
A comprehensive database mapping metalloenzyme functions, metal cofactors, and disease associations;
A unique metallo-CRISPR library of custom single guide RNAs;
An advanced computational toolkit for docking, modeling, and structure-based drug design;
A robust intellectual property portfolio spanning bioinorganic, medicinal, and computational chemistry for metalloenzyme-targeted therapeutics

(Press release, Blacksmith Medicines, APR 16, 2026, View Source [SID1234664431])

On April 16, 2026 Vir Biotechnology, Inc. (Nasdaq: VIR) reported that its global collaboration and licensing agreement with Astellas announced on February 23, 2026 has closed following expiration of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976. The collaboration aims to accelerate the development of VIR-5500, a prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted, PRO-XTEN dual-masked T-cell engager (TCE) for metastatic prostate cancer.

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Summary Financial Terms

Upon closing, Vir Biotechnology receives a $240 million upfront payment and a $75 million equity investment at a price of $10.36 per share. The Company will also receive a near-term $20 million milestone payment, will split U.S. profit/loss equally with Astellas (50/50), and is eligible to receive up to an additional $1.37 billion in development, regulatory and sales milestones, along with tiered, double-digit royalties on ex-U.S. net sales. Under the terms of Vir Biotechnology’s licensing agreement with Sanofi, a portion of certain collaboration proceeds will be shared with Sanofi.

About VIR-5500

T-cell engagers (TCEs) are powerful anti-tumor agents that can direct the immune system, specifically T-cells, to destroy cancer cells. VIR-5500 is an investigational PRO-XTEN dual-masked TCE currently being evaluated in an open-label, non-randomized Phase 1 clinical trial (NCT05997615) designed to assess the safety, pharmacokinetics and preliminary efficacy in participants with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). VIR-5500 is the only dual-masked PSMA-targeting TCE in clinical evaluation.

VIR-5500 combines a bispecific PSMA and CD3 binding TCE with the PRO-XTEN masking technology. The PRO-XTEN masking technology is designed to keep the TCEs inactive (or masked) until they reach the tumor microenvironment, where tumor-specific proteases cleave off the mask and activate the TCEs, leading to killing of cancer cells by T-cells. By confining the activity to the tumor microenvironment, we aim to circumvent the traditionally high toxicity associated with unmasked TCEs and increase their efficacy and tolerability. Additionally, the mask is designed to help drug candidates stay in the bloodstream longer in their inactive form, allowing them to better reach the site of action and potentially allowing for less frequent dosing regimens.

(Press release, Vir Biotechnology, APR 16, 2026, View Source [SID1234664447])

On April 16, 2026 Nula Therapeutics (previously called Apollo Alpha), a biotechnology company developing a new class of medicines targeting the nuclear envelope of cells in order to treat chronic disease and extend healthspan, reported its launch with an up to $20 million award from the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) under its PROSPR (PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience) program, bringing total funding to more than $30 million. Additionally, Nula Therapeutics announced its plans for a phase 1b clinical trial with its lead, small molecule asset NLT-101 in Q4, 2026 in metabolic dysfunction, as the company works to address a broad spectrum of chronic, age-related diseases.

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Nula is built on a fundamental insight: the integrity of the nuclear envelope, the structure that organizes DNA and governs gene expression, plays a central role in maintaining cellular identity and metabolic homeostasis. Degeneration or dysfunction of the nuclear envelope results in metabolic dysfunction and age-related decline. Restoring function of the nuclear envelope represents a novel strategy to treat chronic disease biology. By developing targeted small molecules that restore the nuclear envelope, Nula aims to treat unmet patient needs and extend healthspan across conditions including metabolic disease, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), and neurodegeneration. With a clinic-ready asset, NLT-101, and a clinical study planned to begin later this year, Nula is positioned to generate meaningful data in support of its vision of next-generation medicines for chronic diseases.

"The nuclear envelope is one of the most fundamental and underexplored regulators of cellular health, and we believe it represents one of the most promising frontiers in medicine," said Christopher R. Shepard, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Nula Therapeutics and Principal Investigator on the Award. "Today’s announcement marks not only our debut as a company, but a significant external validation of our science. The ARPA-H award will allow us to rigorously explore NLT-101’s potential to preserve functional health across multiple organ systems, while our core clinical program in metabolic dysfunction moves forward in parallel."

Nils Regge, Founder and General Partner at Apollo Health Ventures, added, "PROSPR is highly relevant to our mission at Apollo Health Ventures. Establishing the evidence base and a clear regulatory pathway for therapeutics that improve healthspan, intrinsic capacity, and functional resilience is foundational to the field of longevity biotechnology. We are excited to see Nula’s program paving the way, and we look forward to seeing the company demonstrate the potential of NLT-101 beyond its initial clinical indication, with implications across multiple age-related conditions."

About the ARPA-H PROSPR Award

Under the ARPA-H PROSPR program, Nula Therapeutics will pursue a concurrent work stream designed to evaluate NLT-101’s impact on intrinsic capacity – a composite measure of physical, cognitive, sensory, and psychological function across multiple organ systems. Specific program objectives include:

Evaluation of NLT-101 in aged preclinical models across multiple intrinsic capacity domains
Advancement of NLT-101 through translational pharmacology and IND-enabling studies
Development of biomarker-driven strategies to quantify functional preservation and therapeutic response
This program integrates functional performance measures and systems-level biomarker analysis to build a robust translational dataset supporting potential clinical development in healthspan-focused indications, while Nula’s primary clinical development program in metabolic dysfunction advances along a well-established regulatory path.

The program culminates in a 12-month, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical study in healthy older adults, with Intrinsic Capacity as the primary endpoint. By assessing intrinsic capacity alongside emerging surrogate biomarkers, the initiative aims to help define measurable, regulatory-relevant endpoints for therapeutics targeting aging biology and functional resilience, potentially accelerating and streamlining future development programs.

(Press release, Nula Therapeutics, APR 16, 2026, View Source [SID1234664463])

On April 16, 2026 Crown Bioscience, a global contract research organization (CRO) and a JSR Life Sciences company, reported it will present new data at the AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting 2026 demonstrating how integrated, patient-derived platforms can accelerate the development of complex oncology modalities, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and radiopharmaceuticals. Across 12 poster presentations, the company highlights scalable approaches to improve target selection, optimize payload design, and overcome resistance, addressing key challenges in translational oncology.

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Collectively, the data underscore the need for predictive, clinically relevant models that better reflect tumor biology and treatment response. By combining patient-derived xenografts (PDX), 3D tumor organoid models, multi-omics, and imaging approaches, Crown Bioscience demonstrates how integrated workflows support more informed decision-making earlier in development, particularly as the industry advances increasingly complex therapeutic modalities.

A central focus this year is advancing ADCs through improved target validation, payload selection, and resistance modeling. New findings introduce a high-throughput organoid platform to rapidly screen payloads or ADCs and support the prediction of in vivo efficacy. The results demonstrate clear differentiation across payload classes and ADC performance in a broad panel of organoid models spanning multiple solid tumor indications, enhancing translational predictability from in vitro screening to in vivo validation, and ultimately to clinical response in patients.

Complementing this work, Crown Bioscience presents ADC-resistant tumor models spanning engineered cell lines, organoids, and PDX models established from previously treated patients. These models seek to replicate clinically relevant resistance mechanisms, including efflux-driven payload resistance and antigen loss, providing insight into treatment failure and a foundation for evaluating next-generation strategies and combination approaches designed to overcome resistance.

Further strengthening the workflow, large-scale multi-omics data validate tumor-associated antigen (TAA) expression across approximately 1,000 PDX models and matched organoid systems, providing insight to support more informed target selection and translational decision-making.

In parallel, Crown Bioscience is co-presenting a poster with Medicines Discovery Catapult on an end-to-end translational workflow for radiopharmaceutical development. This work integrates radiochemistry, imaging, and patient-derived models to evaluate the theranostic pair PSMA-617, demonstrating how the combination of in vitro and in vivo systems improves predictive accuracy and enables more confident progression of radiopharmaceutical candidates.

Together, these studies reflect a shift toward integrated, platform-based approaches that address persistent industry challenges, including limited translational predictability, incomplete understanding of resistance, and inefficiencies in candidate selection. By aligning model systems with clinically relevant biology, Crown Bioscience de-risks the path from target to patient.

Attendees are encouraged to visit Booth #3236 to learn more about these studies and speak with Crown Bioscience’s scientists to gain deeper insights into the integrated platforms and services available to advance oncology programs from discovery through to clinical development.

(Press release, Crown Bioscience, APR 16, 2026, View Source [SID1234664432])