Roy­al­ty deals have be­come the go-to fi­nanc­ing tool this sum­mer as biotechs seek out any avail­able fund­ing sources, with Aque­s­tive Ther­a­peu­tics’ deal with RTW on Thurs­day the lat­est ex­am­ple.

That ac­tiv­i­ty hit its stride dur­ing a two-week stretch in Ju­ly when KKR took a ma­jor­i­ty stake in Health­Care Roy­al­ty Part­ners (HCRx) and Or­biMed beefed up its in­vest­ment with the launch of an­oth­er $1.8 bil­lion roy­al­ty-fo­cused fund. XO­MA Roy­al­ty snapped up two biotechs.

Amid the years-long biotech slump, nascent com­mer­cial com­pa­nies have been forced to weigh their op­tions, and get­ting near-term fund­ing that helps them stay afloat in ex­change for pay-outs on fu­ture drug sales has be­come an in­creas­ing­ly ap­peal­ing choice.

Schrödinger is dis­con­tin­u­ing work on an ex­per­i­men­tal med­i­cine for cer­tain blood can­cers af­ter treat­ment with the drug re­sult­ed in two deaths in an ear­ly-stage tri­al.

The com­pu­ta­tion drug com­pa­ny had been study­ing the can­di­date, called SGR-2921, in a Phase 1 tri­al. It re­cruit­ed pa­tients whose acute myeloid leukemia had re­turned or pro­gressed, and in pa­tients with myelodys­plas­tic syn­dromes who were at high risk of de­vel­op­ing AML.

Schrödinger said there were “two emer­gent events” where the ex­per­i­men­tal drug was be­lieved to have led to the deaths of two AML pa­tients, but the biotech did not say in its Thurs­day an­nounce­ment what those events were and whether they were the same.

Eli Lil­ly is link­ing arms with a ma­chine learn­ing-dri­ven start­up for its next bet on obe­si­ty R&D.

The In­di­anapo­lis phar­ma said it will de­liv­er up to $1.3 bil­lion in a pact with Su­per­lu­mi­nal Med­i­cines. The com­pa­nies did not di­vulge the break­down be­tween up­front, de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial mile­stones.

The duo will work on small mol­e­cules for obe­si­ty and car­diometa­bol­ic dis­eases. Small mol­e­cules are tra­di­tion­al­ly eas­i­er to make than pep­tides, which cur­rent­ly dom­i­nate the obe­si­ty drug mar­ket.

Lil­ly is fa­mil­iar with Su­per­lu­mi­nal, hav­ing con­tributed funds to the biotech's $120 mil­lion Se­ries A in the fall of 2024. Su­per­lu­mi­nal is al­so based in Lil­ly Gate­way Labs in Boston, the gi­ant drug­mak­er's in­no­va­tion fa­cil­i­ty that hous­es mul­ti­ple star­tups.