US industry association promotes an exchanges with Japan on bioclusters, while continuing to push for holistic debate on reforms to the country’s national healthcare system and changes to reimbursement pricing it sees as supporting innovation.

Private Company Edition: Biomedtracker found that 53% of financings during the first quarter were venture capital deals versus 32% in Q1 of last year. Also, Qiming closed a $260m fund, Transition Bio raised a $50m series A round, ProfoundBio completed a $70m series A+ and MycoMedica raised $60m.

Chordia only came into being in late 2017 but has already struck its first major licensing-out deal with a major pharma firm. It is now looking ahead to taking forward a portfolio of novel oncology assets originally acquired from investor Takeda.

Plus deals involving SELLAS/3D Medicines, Kyowa Kirin/InveniAI, JW/Voronoi, Y-mAbs/Takeda, Horizon Discovery/Sanyou, Sentinel Oncology/PharmaEngine