UCB SA of Belgium and Microsoft Corp have entered into a multi-year strategic collaboration to use UCB’s medicinal capabilities and artificial intelligence from Microsoft to discover new drugs. The collaboration builds on work the two companies have already done as part of the Covid Moonshot project, an international effort to develop an antiviral treatment for Covid-19. Financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.

An experimental oncolytic virus therapy in clinical development by Targovax ASA has continued to show a survival benefit for patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma 21 months after treatment. At follow-up, half of the patients in the first-line treatment group were still alive and median overall survival had not been reached, the company announced on 23 February.