Private Company Edition: VC deals fell short of the record-breaking level seen in 2018 and financings may slow a bit more in 2020. Also, UPMC and Frazier close new VC funds, and Emendo raises $61m for gene-editing platform.

Monia told Scrip at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that the company will be more selective about partnerships going forward and build commercial capabilities to market Ionis-owned drugs.

Public Company Edition: At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference and Biotech Showcase it was noted that the US IPO market is likely to be less active in the second half of the year as election risk chills investment. Also, Apellis leads recent follow-on offerings.

Full, planned acquisition of Tokyo-based operation will give US biotech giant a firmer foothold in key market and new platform for Otezla growth.

An experienced hand at M&A, Ajay Piramal has done it again – this time selling Decision Resources Group to Clarivate Analytics for $950m. Apart from $900m in cash, Piramal Enterprises will get a stake in Clarivate while the latter expects the acquisition to be earnings-accretive in 2020.

A collaboration between Novo and Fauna will look at animal hibernation and genetic sequencing for hints toward novel therapies for obesity. Pfizer will use Insilico’s machine learning technology in target validation.

Neon listed on the NASDAQ at $16 per share 18 months ago. It has now been picked up by the ambitious German biotech for just $2.18 per share, having recently ended its cancer vaccine programs and laid off a quarter of its workforce.

BeiGene licenses antibody therapeutics for Castleman’s disease and high-risk neuroblastoma.

Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Pfizer are helping to fund a public-private partnership aimed at improving the primary care health infrastructure in Africa; the collaboration will also exploit the companies’ experience providing therapies and using digital and web-enabled technologies.